


On The Road

by delinquents



Series: Rory and Jess [4]
Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Literati, Past Relationship(s), Relationship Fix-It, Relationship Problems, Road Trips, Second Chances, post-season 6, switching POVs, they TALK which they NEVER did on the show
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:53:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25497922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delinquents/pseuds/delinquents
Summary: "You just dropped the bomb and ran?""I drove."Or, what could have been.
Relationships: Rory Gilmore/Jess Mariano
Series: Rory and Jess [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1817590
Comments: 21
Kudos: 70





	1. Connecticut -  New York - New Jersey

**Author's Note:**

> [they follow in Kerouac's footsteps and make some memories as they go]
> 
> "Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed, but not defeated." Ernest Hemingway

He had prepared himself for disappointment, had known she wouldn't say it back because there's no reason for her to still feel that way about him - but he lingered anyway because there was a fleeting memory of fumbling fingers holding tightly to his own and kissing her on Luke's couch until their mouths went numb.

She had told him over the phone that she _could_ have loved him but she needed to let him go, and she has. He knows she has, because Dean's marriage crumbled after his affair and Rory dropped out of Yale, and Jess is back, now, when he shouldn't be because he knows it's just another check on the list of everything going bad in her life right now. 

So, he had prepared himself for disappointment, but it didn't stop the crushing wave of hurt when she just blinked at him.

He tells himself when he walks away from her that he'd done it for himself, that he needed to say it to make it real. It's stupid and selfish because he gets to drive wherever the roads lead him and she's the one that has to stay and deal with whatever his words have left behind. 

He'd been selfish before. Everyone chalked up his abrupt departure the last time to him being selfish. He'd ruined a good thing with the _best girl_ because _he was selfish_.

And he was.

He was selfish for wanting the father he never got as a kid. Selfish for thinking it'd work out. Selfish for staying even when it was obvious it would never work - not after all this time. 

They'll chalk up his abrupt departure this time to him being selfish. 

He can handle that because _he_ doesn't have to handle it.

* * *

Luke hadn't told her he was here for a reason, Rory knows this, but it doesn't stop it hurting any more than it does. As she watches him walk away she remembers how much she liked making him smile and the way he would laugh freely when they were alone. She thinks back to walking blindly through the street because they never stopped kissing long enough to see where their feet were falling - the same street he's disappearing into now. 

She'd tried so hard to understand it from his perspective. Tried to put herself into his shoes and see what he saw. She found she couldn't because she had seen it all along through _her own_ eyes but had ignored it in favor of forming a friendship with Dean (which did the opposite of good) and trying to keep the peace between people who had wanted anything but that. She had seen the way he struggled with assignments, not because he didn't understand it, but because he just _knew_ it wouldn't matter. She'd seen the disapproving glances his way, had heard the whispers about him, known he had seen and heard them too but shrugged them off much like she had. Knew he'd been getting them longer than he'd been in Stars Hollow, and she'd ignored that ache of guilt in her chest the entire time.

Her feet carry her without her realizing it. The leather of his jacket is warm against her palm and he looks surprised and hopeful and guilty when she meets his eyes. His car, still in need of a paint job and probably a decent heating system, is just beyond their reach, and his keys jingle in his hand.

"Where?"

She knows he needs to leave. 

"Anywhere with a bit more noise."

He'd always hated how quiet Stars Hollow was. She remembers that.

"Okay."

He seems to know that she needs to leave, too.

* * *

He waits in the car when she disappears into the house to pack a bag. They'd yet to really say anything to each other, but there's a comforting level of familiarity when she slides back into the passenger seat and he starts the engine again.

Memories of late-night drives when they couldn't sleep, a drive-in movie once that they didn't pay attention to in favor of making out in the back seat, fumbling hands unbuttoning jeans and exploring bodies but going no further. All in this very car. It's a bit more tense, now, than it used to be, but once they pass the Connecticut border Rory turns to face him and she smiles at him for the first time in a little three years.

When he faces the road again he can breathe a little easier.

It's stupidly late, so he turns into the first B&B they see a sign for. Jess can't read the name of it on the signs, but they have a room with two beds and that's all that matters. The pad of paper in their room says New York, though, so that's at least one sign that they know where they are. The novelty isn't lost on him that Rory had ditched school once to find him in New York. He had tried to convince himself that their story started before that, but that was just Rory and Jess. Rory _and_ Jess started then - when Dean was still around but just a distant thought, and she'd called it fate finding Belinda and when he'd teased her about not wanting to take a hotdog onto the subway. 

They started this all off in New York the first time. It's kind of fitting that they start to try and reconnect here too. Sure, it's no Washington Square Park, not even close, but it's the right state and Jess will take whatever he can get. 

He gives Rory the bathroom to change in; because she has makeup to wash off and all he needs to do is change into sweats and a new shirt. There's a brief memory of her telling him she can't sleep with the breeze on her face, so he takes the bed closest to the window once he's done. There's a crappy TV on the wall and the only channel that isn't interrupted with grey static every few seconds is playing some Spanish soap opera. He'd learned enough Spanish to get by in California, only because Jimmy's neighbors would pay him to fix their taps every few weeks when they broke and they only spoke Spanish, so Jess lets it play just for something to listen to.

He's done this before. Tolerating shitty TV in a shitty motel room. There's never been Rory, though. She slips back into the room and puts her bag down beside his, sits on her bed but faces him and crosses her legs. He leaves the TV playing when he mirrors her position, but he does turn it down a bit. 

"How does this normally work, then?" Rory asks and gestures to their bags. He'd left one of his in the car, under the back seat so no one would see it and want to steal it, but the bag he did bring up is still bigger than the one Rory has. He thinks she might not have unpacked from Yale yet, because there's no way she would pack _that_ sparkly top peeking past the zip. He tries not to think about Rory at a college party, wearing _that_ sparkly top and having guys watch her.

"I don't normally have a plan," He shrugs, "Just kind of drive until I don't want to anymore. Get a job that pays cash in hand for two weeks, start it back up again."

"Even Kerouac had a plan," She raises an eyebrow, but it's teasing and light like they're falling back into their same old routine. They're not, he knows because that'll take time and he's just dropped a pretty big bomb on her a few hours back that they'll have to discuss at some point. 

"Even Kerouac fucked it up at the beginning."

"Is this what this is?" Rory asks and there's a silent, invisible gesture between them, "The beginning?"

There's a lump in his throat when he nods slowly, just barely, but there's a glow to her cheeks when she spots it, "Yeah. This is the beginning." 

* * *

Jess leaves Rory to hand the keys in early the next morning so he can go get gas a few minutes down the road. They'd decided to head out as soon as possible because the entire stretch of road they're on feels like something out of a Stephen King novel - neither of them were ever big King fans anyway. Rory knows that the tension from the room will follow them in the car and that the only reason Jess went for gas now rather than after they check out is to give them both some time to gather their thoughts separately. 

She needs to get out of that room, sits down on the edge of the sidewalk after handing in the keys. The ice machine clunks occasionally behind her and there's a couple arguing on the second floor, muffled from where Rory's sat but clear enough for her to be able to hear. She tunes it all out and turns her mobile between her fingers. She should phone her mother or even Paris, but then she'd need to explain everything and she doesn't understand it enough herself to try and get it out into words. 

Rory shouldn't have come. She should have let Jess drive away, should have tried to get over him all over again. She'd told him what she wanted to say at graduation, listened to his uneven breathing on the other end of the phone, eleven states and 2,988.8 miles west, convinced herself she was over him. It was easy to push him to the back of her mind when she was in Europe, and then she was a college freshman and her assignments were distraction enough. She tries to think, now, if she was ever really over him or just good at providing distractions from him.

Her copy of Howl still sits on her bedside table, and she could never ignore his notes in the margins when she reads it - can't ignore his notes in any of her books. She has one of his sweatshirts and one of his band tee shirts in her wardrobe. She hadn't thought twice about packing them for college, because the sweatshirt was good for sleeping in when the heater stopped working, and the band tee shirt was soft against her skin after a shower. It was nothing different from what she'd been doing since they first got together and she'd never stopped to think that maybe that was part of the problem.

Dean was a moment of weakness in a bigger moment of weakness, and her skin prickles at the memory of that night. She'd cried when he'd left because she knew that wasn't how her story was supposed to go. She'd never thought about handing Dean her virginity when they were dating but remembers one stilted dinner with her mother when she said she was thinking about with Jess. That was how she'd wanted it to go, but just days later Jess was sitting next to her on that bus and Rory was pretending that she didn't see his bag tucked under the seats. 

There's so much she wants to think about and dissect, but at that moment Jess pulls into a parking space a few feet away. He joins her on the curb and lights a cigarette. She'd always hated that he smoked but hated even more how he made it look cool. 

"We're not too far away," Jess says gently, slicing through the silence, "If you want me to drive you back."

They don't have a plan and it would make sense for Rory to head back to Stars Hollow. She knows Stars Hollow and what waits for her there. It's news of Dean's divorce, questions about why she's taking time off Yale, her grandmother pretending not to be disappointed every Friday night. Rory doesn't know what lies ahead for her if she tells Jess to keep driving. She can guess - motel rooms just like this, stretching pennies every now and again, conversations they don't want to have but know they'll need to - but she does know, with complete certainty, that there's _Jess._

She sighs and tucks her phone into her jacket pocket, "If you want to pull a Kerouac, you'll have to put up with New Jersey."

"I think I can handle that," He meets her eye and the small smile he gives her looks relaxed but vulnerable. 

Rory gets to drive for a little bit, but they switch again just outside of New Jersey lines. She mans the radio, instead, and toes off her boots when they pinch at her heels.

Jess parks them outside a Target an hour into the state, gets them snacks and drinks whilst Rory finds a pair of comfy trainers and a few jumpers. She hadn't looked at what bag she'd picked up back home, just threw in some toiletries and her phone charger before heading back out, so there's not a large selection of comfy clothes on her right now. 

Jess grumbles a little when Rory hands the cashier some notes alongside his change, but she just gives him a smug little grin and takes two of the four bags off of him. 

They sit on the hood of the car in the corner of the car park and watch the highway on the other side of the fence. She pinches his thigh as a yellow car speeds past and he swats at her wrist half-heartedly. Rory's lacing up the new trainers onto her feet once Jess speaks again. 

He'd pulled the tag off one of the jumpers for her, and he's using his lighter to burn off the few frayed stitchings at the hem, "I was going to say something."

Rory doesn't reach for the jumper, just leans back against the car next to him. Their shoulders knock together but neither of them moves away. If she closes her eyes she thinks back to sitting just like this with him one night, right outside Luke's diner, watching Taylor and Kirk try and set up Christmas lights on the gazebo and laughing when Taylor wobbled on the ladder. 

"When you graduated," Jess continues, hands fiddling with the lighter now but not igniting the flame, "I phoned with a whole speech prepared but then you answered and... I just couldn't get it out."

"What were you going to say?"

He sighs and closes his eyes, rests the back of his head against the glass behind him, "That I was stupid." She huffs out a laugh, can't keep it in, and even Jess's lips curve up a little. "There was more, but that was the main theme."

"You had to leave." Rory understands that now. She didn't, before, but she thinks she learned along the way why he did it. 

"I should have gone about it better."

"You didn't know how to."

"Still don't."

Rory can't think of anything else to say. This is a topic he'll have to find the words for, something he'll have to start without her help, and if he needs more time to talk about it then she can give him more time.

Her fingers lace with his at his thigh and the way his hand squeezes hers reminds her of the look in his eyes when he said he loves her. That's a conversation _she'll_ have to start, but she doesn't want to until she can say those words back. It's on the tip of her tongue but she doesn't want this to be like with Dean. Where she says it the first time because she feels like she needs to.

She wasn't lying - on the phone - she knows she could have loved Jess if they had more time. She loved parts of him when they were together, loved the other parts of him when they were separate but never had the chance to combine them. 

They both need a little bit more time, and that's why she won't even entertain the idea of going back to Stars Hollow just yet. 

"You need a haircut," She says, instead, and his shoulders shake when he laughs. 


	2. New York - Chicago

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Why did you come on this trip? What are you figuring out?"  
> Because he wanted to clear his head and get over Rory, but he can't do that with her right here with him, drawing the same patterns on his ribs that she used to do when they were together as if nothing's changed between them. He can't do that when he doesn't want to.  
> "Who says I have anything to figure out?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case some of you guys haven't read the edits from the last chapter yet, it was pointed out to me that my timeline was a little off so I went back and edited it. In this fic, Jess came back after three years to get the car and that's when Rory decided to go with him - so the affair with Dean and Rory dropping out is still a thing but instead of moving into her grandparent's pool house, she just skipped town instead. Hope that clears things up a little bit :) x
> 
> ALSO: this story does contain implied/mild (like SUPER mild) sexual content. We don't go into detail and you can just skip a paragraph or two if you don't like reading that kind of thing :)

He doesn't get it cut immediately. They drive back through the roads they just came through and find another hotel in New York, this time much closer to the city. Rory checks them in while Jess parks up. This room is smaller than the last one and the beds are forced closer together, with no bedside table in between them but enough space to stand. Rory turns the TV on this time but they fall asleep with the news playing. When Rory wakes up again, Jess is still laying on his bed but he's got the remote in hand and has his eyes focused on the TV across the room. 

"What did you do after California?" She finds herself asking because it's been in the back of her mind since he left the first time. There was no question that he'd followed Jimmy, but there was also no question that he wasn't going to last that long in a city like LA. He feels comfortable in cities, Rory knows, but he'd always hated sand and LA is so different from New York. 

Jess turns to lie on his stomach and rests his cheek against the pillow. Rory lays on her side, facing him, and can't help but notice he looks so much younger like this. 

"One of the guys I worked with over there was heading to Wisconsin," He says. It's clear he woke up not too long ago, too, because his voice is a little rough with sleep. "Decided to go with him. I got in contact with Liz around Wyoming and she told me Luke had my car. I finished the trip in Wisconsin and got a train to Hartford."

"What were you going to do in Wisconsin?"

He shrugs, "Wasn't planning on staying long. This guy lived pretty much on Geneva Lake so probably just laze out there for a day or two. After that, I was just planning on checking out the bus routes and seeing where I could get to."

"But then Liz phoned."

"Then Liz phoned," He says with a gentle nod. He bits his lip for a moment and when he meets Rory's eye again it sends a shiver down her spine, "I wanted to be gone before you saw me. I didn't want to make it worse."

"You still chased me down the street, though."

He only laughs quietly when Rory smiles at him and it feels good, being able to joke with him like this again.

* * *

Jess lets her shower first and stares at the ceiling while he listens to the water run. The paint there is patchy in places, probably to cover water leaks and there's a small hole right by the light bulb. They'd clearly tried to hide it with the light shade but Jess is lying directly underneath it and can't seem to pull his eyes off of it once he finds it. 

He doesn't know why it's interesting but it serves as a good distraction when Rory emerges from the bathroom in just a towel. He moves into the bathroom and has probably the coldest shower of his entire life, but it cools him down and the assault of icy water distracts him enough to not think about Rory on the other side of the wall. 

They're starting off their Kerouac trip with, obviously, the White Horse Tavern ten blocks over - because you can't follow in his footsteps without starting off where he'd overstayed his welcome one too many times. Jess doesn't have a lot of clothes with him, and normally wouldn't put a lot of effort into picking out an effort with the clothes he does have, but Rory's with him now and he feels like a girl when he notices his shirt doesn't match his jeans. He changes it quickly because he remembers Rory's sparkly top and doesn't want to look stupid standing next to her, and only pulls on the white tee shirt because he knows it clings to his body and Rory always liked when his shirts did that when they were seventeen. 

He has to swallow around a lump in his throat when he leaves the bathroom because Rory's wearing that sparkly top and it looks ten times better than he thought it would. The conversation flows a little easier between them now, but when she turns her back to him to finish sorting out her hair he has to stop talking and look away because the top shows a lot of skin, and her _back_ shouldn't be as appealing as it is. 

They get the subway and walk along the Hudson River with the rest of the crowds. It's a Saturday night and they pass by a few bars already packed and spilling out into the streets. They're on the corner Albany Street when they're joined by a group of college students also heading for the White Horse. Jess and Rory fall a little behind the group a few moments later because Rory's engrossed in a conversation with this one girl, Haley, when they find out they're both from Connecticut and that Haley's mom used to work at the Independence Inn a few years ago. 

Haley's holding hands with this guy that just screams Frat Boy but he's read a few Beats literature and holds a pretty decent conversation with Jess over the girls' heads. When Rory winds her arm around Jess's waist, his arm falls to her shoulders without a question - they've not done this for close to four years but it feels like no time has passed at all. Jess feels his chest tighten at that, but Rory's thumb is rubbing circles onto his tee-shirt and it's soothing in a way that scares him, too. 

The White Horse Tavern is packed, as expected, but the Frat Guy (Jess missed when he said his name, finds he doesn't care enough to ask for it, Rory will probably say it at some point) says he'll grab them drinks and to just sit tight outside. Rory elbows her way through the crowd with him to find the bathroom, so Jess is stuck outside on the curb with Haley.

"Your girlfriend's cute," She says, offers Jess a cigarette and they have to use his lighter when she can't find hers, "Smart, too."

"Ex." Jess corrects her and doesn't really know why. 

"Excuse me?"

He clears his throat and nods his head to the door, "Rory. She's my ex. We've not dated for four years."

"Huh," Haley looks confused and Jess can see why. Especially when Rory and Frat Guy come back and Rory drops down right beside him, hands Jess his drink and settles back under his arm. Haley sends him a knowing look because they're basically mirroring how she and her boyfriend are sitting. Jess tries to ignore her. 

So what that this random stranger thinks she knows something? She doesn't. She doesn't know that just yesterday he stood in the middle of the street and told Rory he loved her and that they'd driven out of that stupid town less than half an hour later. She doesn't know that with every hour that passes where Rory doesn't say it back but looks at him like she wants to, it hurts a little bit more. 

Rory's free hand falls to his thigh as they sit on the curb and her cheek rests against his shoulder whenever she's not drinking. It feels familiar and new all at once and Jess finishes his drink quicker than he normally would. Needs some liquid courage in his system to cope with the warmth of Rory against him again after all this time. 

"Your girlfriend's cute," Frat Guy says an hour later. They're on round number five and the girls are too busy giggling on the sidewalk to push their way to the bar so the guys have taken it on themselves to grab some drinks. Jess thinks this will probably be their last round before they try and find some food - at least, Rory's eyes stay closed longer with each blink and she's definitely less than sober, so Jess just wants to get them back to the hotel where they can sleep off their hangovers the next morning. He doesn't have any Tylenol for tomorrow morning, doesn't know if Rory has some but preps himself for the hangover anyway.

Jess wants to correct Frat Guy but decides against it. He's too drunk to tell the story, too drunk to care anymore. Besides, it wouldn't have done any good. The second they step out the door again, Haley's clutching her stomach on the ground in shrieks of laughter and her eye's dance when she spots Jess.

"Jess!" She laughs and Rory turns to face him. Her cheeks are red and her eyes are bright, smile large, and warm and directed right at him. "Your girlfriend's hilarious!"

Rory doesn't say anything about it, just stands to meet Jess halfway and take her drink from him. It's some fruity gin thing that Haley insisted Rory try out and Rory seems to like, and the seventeen-year-old boy still in Jess is begging for Rory to let him taste it on her mouth later on. For now, he settles against her when she wraps her pointer finger on his belt loop, and he takes a drink to stop himself leaning forward and kissing her. 

Haley and Frat Guy disappear five minutes later but Jess hasn't paid attention to them since Rory stood up so he's not too bothered by it. Rory fills him in on Stars Hollow and some professor Paris is sleeping with, and Jess tells her about the week he spent in Wyoming. They leave their now empty glasses on the window sill and trek lazily a few blocks until they find a 7/11. 

"That's disgusting," Jess grunts and tries not to spit out the bite of sandwich in his mouth. Rory finds it funnier than she would sober and he steadies her with a hand on her elbow even though he's laughing now too. They split a sandwich and a bottle of water between them on the subway, and walk back to the hotel with their arms around each other. 

"What happened with Yale, then?" They're ten minutes from their hotel and he figures now is as good as time as any to ask. If she doesn't want to answer she won't, he knows, and if she gets annoyed by the story then she has the whole night to sleep it off. 

Rory shrugs against him as if they're having a casual conversation, but there's a tenseness to her shoulders that tells Jess she knows this isn't casual, "It was fine, and then Marty happened and classes got harder - because _obviously_ they would, it's _Yale_ \- and... I don't even know how it all started but suddenly Dean was back and he told me his marriage was already over and it _wasn't_ -"

"Woah, breathe."

"And then I slept with him. I helped him have an _affair_ which is so _not_ me and..." He tries not to look at her because she turns her head away from him to hide whatever emotion is etched all over it, but he hears the shakey breathe she lets out, "This is so not how I imagined it would turn out. I didn't think I would be the bad person in this."

"Oh no?" He jokes, nudges his hip to hers and has to smile when she flashes him an amused grin. He's good at this, Jess knows he is because he's not the biggest fan of taking anything seriously, and he always managed to make her laugh when they were dating. It came back to bite them in the ass, he knows, but he also needs her to know that the Jess that made her laugh and could turn anything into a joke is still kicking about. 

"Do you feel bad about it?" Just because Jokey-Jess is still around, it doesn't mean he doesn't know when to tone it down. He's learned, in the three years he's been away for, that communication is kind of a big deal now he's not living with Liz. He'd been clued into that, living in Stars Hollow and seeing the town's dynamic, but the town had hated him (his own girlfriend's _mother_ hated him) and there were so many factors fighting against him it didn't seem like a big deal back then. Sasha and Jimmy were all about talking, and Lily never stopped asking questions, and even after he left California, people asked questions about where he'd been and where he was going.

Plus, Jess always hated seeing Rory like this - confused and angry, taking it all on her shoulders. He knows where it will lead. She'll lash out, place the blame somewhere else but that only makes the self-guilt ten times harder to deal with further down the line.

She tries to hide her scoff, but Jess hears it and pinches her hip, "Hey, Kerouac figured things out on his road trip. That's what we're doing, start talking."

"Yes," Rory whispers, "Of course I feel bad about it. I regret doing that to myself, and to Dean's wife and... I feel bad about it all."

"Well then, clearly you're not a bad person." Jess shrugs, focuses on the lampposts they pass instead of the way Rory raises her eyebrow and looks up at him, "If you didn't regret it or feel bad about it, then yeah you'd be a terrible person and I'd probably leave you here to fend for yourself," She hits his chest with her free hand but smoothes her thumb over the spot immediately afterward. Jess carries on, "Sure, you're the bad guy in that story. Dean will probably blame you because it's easier than admitting he cheated, and his wife will blame you once the divorce is finalized because it's easier than admitting you married a cheater, but that's just ignorant people refusing to see what really happened. Just because you're the bad guy in one person's story doesn't mean you're not the good guy in someone else's."

Rory doesn't say anything but her fingers clench around his side momentarily when he's finished. He stays quiet too, watches their feet as they walk.

"Why did you come on this trip? What are you figuring out?" She finally asks, rests her chin to his shoulder as he glances at her momentarily.

He knows what he came on this road trip for - because he's not found a place to dig his roots into just yet, because he's still stupidly in love with Rory and it's pathetic and painful because he needed to get away from Stars Hollow and Liz and he couldn't go back to California, not when Jimmy's there soaking up the sun with a new family. 

Because he wanted to clear his head and get over Rory, but he can't do that with her right here with him, drawing the same patterns on his ribs that she used to do when they were together as if nothing's changed between them. He can't do that when he doesn't want to.

"Who says I have anything to figure out?" He's deflecting and Rory knows that but they find their hotel quickly enough after that and they're too busy trying not to get sidetracked by the guys selling DVDs door-by-door so Rory doesn't say anything about it. 

"You grew," Rory comments, slumped against the door frame as Jess tries to get the key to work. The guy had told Rory when they checked in that the doors are stiff but they'll budge eventually. 

"Did I?"

"Mhm," She hums, knocks her forehead against his shoulder. When the door finally gives way they navigate their way into the room in the dark.

Rory's hand is suddenly in his and Jess walks blindly past where the light switch is, but his hands find their way to her hips and her hands are on his shoulders so he doesn't care. He can't bring himself to kiss her mouth, knows that's a line they really shouldn't cross right now, knows that it'll only hurt him after his confession just two days ago, but she moans against his ear when his lips find her neck and that's just as good as kissing her. 

There have been other girls since he'd left Stars Hollow. Girls in Venice liked his grungy edge and he'd regretted a few of them, but the more times he let a girl unbutton his pants the easier it got to convince himself that Rory was just a single line in the credits of his movie. Rory isn't just a line, though, and he'd been stupid to think he could bury her under nameless girls, but he's kind of glad he tried because he's learned a few new tricks since he had Rory in his arms and Rory seems to like them.

He doesn't want to think about Rory with another guy, about what tricks she's picked up. He knows she slept with Dean, but he doesn't know how many times Rory's worn _that_ shirt out at a college party and if she let guys touch her the way he's touching her now. 

Rory's fingers slide up underneath his shirt, finds the same scars she would trace in Stars Hollow, and her nails graze against the contour of his shoulders on their trek back down. 

"Rory," He sighs into her neck, presses himself closer to her, and, coincidentally, the back of her knees against a bed. It's him, he finds when he's hovered over her, her hair fanning out on the sheets and her cheeks rosy. "We shouldn't."

"I know," Rory arches into him as she says it, fingers finding the buckle of his belt and getting to work anyway. He lets her push him down onto the bed and kiss down his chest where she's pushed his shirt up, lets himself forget about other guys that might have touched her because she's touching _him_ right now. The walls are thin and he bites into his arm to stop whoever's in the next room hearing him but takes pride when Rory forgets to do the same later - when he's kneeling off the bed and has her thighs over his shoulders and her hands tugging at his hair. 

She'd said he'd needed a hair cut but seems happy enough to fist the longer locks now and _pull._ Jess remembers the first time they did this. He'd driven them forty minutes out of Stars Hollow with just the intention to _drive,_ but it was raining and Rory wanted to listen to the rain against the car's roof. They'd stretched out together in the back seat and he can't remember how it started, just remembers that she had been wearing a skirt but he'd still slid it down her legs just to be able to say he'd undressed her. She'd been shy and loud all at once and he was glad they were hidden on a back road because had they stuck to their original plan of making out on Luke's couch, he wouldn't have heard the breathy little sighs and the louder moans she gave him that night. 

He still doesn't kiss her when he crawls back up her body but presses his mouth to her collar whilst she calms her breathing back into an even pace. She regroups much quicker than he did, and her fingers trace his jaw as they lay together. 

"Say it," She whispers, tense underneath him. He knows what she wants to hear, feels his heartbreak a little more because he knows he's going to say it but she won't say it back. 

"I love you," He secures it with a purple mark right above her breast and it's okay when she doesn't say it back. She clutches onto him a little bit tighter, pulls him up to bury her nose into his shoulder, and hugs him.

It's a milestone, he knows. She's ready to hear it this time and if she wanted him to say it it's because she'll be ready, soon, to say it back. Maybe not tonight, or tomorrow or even a year from now, but she's on her way there and that's more than Jess can ask for.

* * *

Rory doesn't sleep much that night, knows that Jess doesn't either because his fingers never stop drawing patterns on her back when they lie under the covers together. She closes her eyes and just savors the feeling of his warm chest against hers and the tingles that follow his fingertips. In her mind, they're seventeen and in the backseat of his car. Bowie's playing softly on the radio and it doesn't mix all that well with the rain against the car but it hadn't mattered at that point. Just five weeks before that, she'd been annoyed and sad about seeing another girl's bra in the backseat, but she was with Dean and couldn't get angry about it, and this time it's _her_ bra on the seat and she understood, then, why there were so many songs written about sex. 

She's not even _had_ sex with Jess yet and it feels so much like they're seventeen again instead of twenty-one. She'd had sex with Dean and regretted it. She doesn't want to regret it with Jess. Not now and not ever. 

And she knows she's slowly breaking him. She'd gotten in his car two days ago, told him to drive, and that she doesn't want to go back to Stars Hollow just yet. She's sticking to the road trip with him and she's unbuckling his belt and getting him to say those three words to her, but she's not saying it back. 

She knows. 

She knows it takes a lot for him to say it and that it's not fair of her to do this to him. Except, she's not playing him. She knows she's not because she likes hearing those words and there's something in her chest after he says them that makes her want to say it back. Because it feels right. The words just don't come easily for her. She knows he'd been thinking about it longer than he'd give on, and that he had time to find those words and the courage to say them, so she hopes that he knows she needs to find the same courage in her. 

By the time the sun seeps through the blinds they still haven't spoken. Rory decides to break the silence because it's getting too stifling now, "When are we leaving?"

His hands leave her to stretch out above his head and she lifts her cheek from his chest, rests it against the pillow next to his. She keeps her legs on him, though, doesn't want him thinking this is a one night kind of thing. She thinks he doesn't want it to be one, either, considering what he's said, but she's not sure if he knows that she's almost right where he is, just needs a bit more time.

"We can go soon," He sighs, turns to his side to face her, "But Kerouac did it at night."

"He also did it on a bus," She points out, "Unless you plan on ditching your car here I'd say we're already straying from the script."

Jess hums and eyes her for a moment. She takes in the stubble on his chin, the way his collar slopes into his shoulder. That one lock of hair that always fell to his forehead when he was seventeen still falls down, even now, and there's a comfort that not _everything's_ changed. 

"Do you want to go?" 

"I want to leave this room, I'm pretty sure we'll catch something if we stay any longer."

"Gross," He winces and they both get out of bed. There's an awkward "no, you go first", "no, you" back and forth for a few minutes when the need for a shower gets too much, but Rory puts a stop to it by grabbing his hand and dragging them both into the bathroom. She steps under the spray of water first, closes her eyes and leans back into it one moment and catches his eye the next. 

It should be a little nerve-wracking - the way he's looking at her so casually - but she finds it's not and that it's just so _easy_ to reach out for him. He meets her halfway and sucks another mark into her neck. She matches him now, two marks on their skin that won't get hidden by their shirts and it's thrilling to look over when they're getting dressed and see the way they stand out stark against his gray tee shirt. 

They check out of the hotel but don't head west towards Chicago just yet. They ditch the car in a parking lot in East Harlem and take the subway to Washington Square Park. The last time they were here, together, they left almost immediately again. This time, they linger. Rory finds them a spot under a tree and Jess reads for a bit whilst Rory lays on her back and watches the sky. 

She turns her head to study him when the sky gets boring. He's not changed much but, also, too much at the same time. His face is a lot softer now, which is off because his structure's still exactly the same, but his eyes aren't as hard set as before and his jaw doesn't clench when he reads like it used to. He's reading _Anna Karenina_ and she feels like there's a symbolic reference there in the first two paragraphs. 

_All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way... The wife had discovered an intrigue between her husband and their former French governess..._

Two out of the first three sentences are the only ones that stick in Rory's head right now. Jess had come from an unhappy family and Rory herself had caused an affair between a man and his wife. She knows if she digs a little deeper there's a symbolic theme for them there, but she refuses to dig for it.

Jess looks up at her briefly and moves his hand to run his fingers through her hair, and she closes her eyes. They'd not touched since the shower, which was less than innocent, and his touch now feels too soothing in comparison to the harsh push and pull they'd been doing not two hours before. She sighs whilst his fingernails scratch at her scalp leans back against his thigh and just lets herself indulge in it until they get hungry and leave.

The guy with the hot dog cart has moved in the years since they'd parted ways, but they find another one. 

"Not as good," Rory comments. 

Jess has already finished half of it but adds on, "I feel like it's punishment for not trying to find the other one."

They ride the subway with their hotdogs and Jess pokes fun at the time Rory had asked, so seriously, if it was allowed. The record store is still there, more of a hole in the wall than anything else, and they browse the cassette tapes for an hour or so. They buy three just purely to make fun of them as they drive, and Jess insists on buying two because Rory had never heard of them and that's just _not allowed_. Rory gets a few, too, because if she has to listen to Jess's music he'll have to listen to her music, too. 

"Compromise," She'd said when she'd put them on the counter next to his pile and Jess just gives her a gentle little nod and a quirk of his lips. He takes the bag and she drags him around the closest tourist attractions that she can find. She knows that they're following in Kerouac's footsteps, but she'd reread _The Catcher in the Rye_ just days before Jess showed up and so she also wants to walk the streets that Holden Caulfield did. 

"You know he's fictional, right?" Jess grumbles when they hail a cab from Grand Central Station. 

"Hush or I'll make you go to the theatre."

"So I'm Sally now?"

"Hush!"

They hit the National History Museum and walk around the park because they don't have roller skates and the ice rink won't get put up for another few days. "Shame," Jess had commented as they waited for their coffees, and he juts his chin out to where the city has laid out fencing around the space for the ice rink, "You would have looked cute in those skate skirts."

She shoves her elbow into his ribs and he slings his arm around her shoulders when they begin walking again. They grab some coffee in Greenwich Village and the barista points them in the direction of The Village Vanguard. The outside has been updated since Kerouac had stepped foot here, but there's an air about the place that makes Rory feel like they really have stepped foot into his time. 

By the time they've sat in a corner booth and sharing a plate of onion rings between them, the poetry slam session is half-over. Jess seems to be paying attention but Rory's distracted by the memory of last night (and their shower this morning) and the knowledge that what she's doing is so completely unfair to him. 

She tries to comfort herself with the fact that Jess is letting her. He hadn't put up a fight last night because he _wanted_ that just as much as she did, and he told her he loved her again when she asked, and he didn't refuse the shower this morning either. It doesn't comfort her, though, because Jess loves her and Rory knows he'll do whatever she asks him too. 

She nudges his shin with the tip of her sneaker. When he looks over at her, arm thrown over the back of their booth, she tries to make her smile comforting and genuine. It might come across as a bit shakey and closer to a grimace because she's a little unsure of what she wants to say, but his hand drops to the back of her neck and gives her a quick reassuring squeeze.

"Give me some time," Is what she eventually manages to come out with, after two local poets took to the microphone about poems of death and disease. 

Jess doesn't say anything but his hand falls to her thigh under the table and Rory thinks he understands.

Hopes he understands.

The sun begins setting just before rush-hour so they ride the subway back to the car. Rory toes off her shoes and curls her legs up onto the seat, and Jess slides in one of the new cassettes as he starts the engine. They listen to the Ape Hangers as they drive through the Holland Tunnel, but by the time they enter Pennsylvania they switch it to some awful sixties band that they mock for a few hours. 

"When do you want to switch?" She yawns once they pass through Dover. He's been driving for just under four hours and the sun's fully set now. 

His hand falls to her ankle on the space between them and rubs soothingly for a few seconds before he lifts it back to the wheel. 

"Get some sleep," He says gently, "We'll stop at the next motel I find."

* * *

Rory falls asleep pretty quickly and Jess turns the stereo down to not wake her up. He rolls the window down and rests his elbow against the open space, likes the breeze on the side of his face, and the way the music drowns out the sound of rustling trees they pass. 

He lies. The next motel ends up only being five minutes away from Yarnell, but he doesn't want to stop driving just yet so he carries on for another hour before he needs to stop for gas. Rory wakes up and gets out the car as he's filling up the tank, rests her back against the back door, and watches his hands as he shakes off the extra gas and closes the hatch. 

"Good sleep?"

"Mhm," She nods, "Need to stretch my legs. You didn't find a motel?"

"No rooms," He lies and tries not to overthink when she links their pinkies together as they walk. She buys some more water and picks up a few snacks for them and he pays, smiles a little sheepishly when the girl behind the counter calls them cute. 

Jess finds another motel half an hour down the road and Rory's awake this time so he pulls into a parking space and pays for a room. It's cheaper here because they're in the middle of nowhere and not New York, so he expects even less when they walk up to their room. One of the beds looks like it's hanging onto its last thread and they barely look at each other before stripping to their underwear and crawling into the good bed. 

He's too tired to make a move and they fall asleep on opposite sides of the bed. It's too hot to touch each other and when he wakes up again at midday she's in the shower and the covers have been kicked around his ankles. 

There's still another eight hours to drive until they hit Chicago, so they split the drive between them; swapping every two hours. When they aren't driving, they're reading. Rory started reading some collection from a Polish author Jess has never heard of but switched it for Jess's beat-up copy of _The Oydessy_ instead. She pokes fun, for a moment, of Jess's stack of books in the trunk but just rolls her eyes playfully when he mentions her book system back in Stars Hollow. It's one of the first time he's willingly brought up that town, and Jess can sense that Rory's itching to ask every question under the sun she could possibly think of - why did he leave? Did he ever think he'd come back? Why didn't he say something to her instead of ditching town? Did he not think he could face breaking up with her to her face? Why did she have to do it over the phone even though he skipped town first? - but she just starts reading out loud so he can follow along with her. 

When the last page is finished Jess is the one reading, and Rory's driving them through Fort Wayne. Traffic is slow and they'll probably be at a snail's pace through the rest of Indiana.

"What's California like?"Rory asks, tapping her fingers against the top of the steering wheel. She doesn't look at Jess, but Jess is already angled her way. He'd been hanging his head back against the window with his eyes shut, not necessarily because he's tired but because Rory has her hair up today (a style he's not familiar with but likes nonetheless) and he doesn't want to look at the marks he'd left on her neck last night, but he looks at her now, at the way she bites her lip when a horn behind them blares, the way her tapping on the wheel changes rhythm constantly, at the way she's steadfastly looking anywhere but _him_. 

Despite what she said in the jazz bar, that she needs time, time he's willing to give her, and despite knowing that she's on her way there, Jess really doesn't know how long he can cope with whatever dance they're doing with each other. They're balancing on a thin line and he doesn't know what their options are, but he feels like, at times, they're leaning towards completely different options than each other and it's exhausting. 

"Hot, sand everywhere," He shrugs, closes his eyes again and the second he does he feels Rory's gaze fall on him. Like she'd been waiting for him to look away, "I tried to avoid the beach best I could but I'm still finding sand in my bag to this day."

Rory laughs a little, but tapes his knee and he opens his eyes in time to see her give him a 'come-on' look, "Kerouac figured things out on his trip," She repeats his words back to him with a smug little grin, "Start talking."

It's her of asking without asking. Jess thinks she had known, that day on the bus, and he can't decide if that was good or bad. He hadn't known how far he would get, that day, just knew that by the time he reached New Haven he would know. He'd expected himself to get off the bus there and get straight on the one heading for Stars Hollow again. He had Rory's face flashing in his eyes the whole ride to California and it had stung. She'd right next to him on the back of that bus, probably hadn't seen the bag tucked under the seat, and the awkwardness of their conversation had hurt but the look she gave him just before stepping off - a look that said _goodbye_ and _don't go_ and _this hurts_ all in one - had damn near killed him. 

"I didn't have any big expectations for him," He means Jimmy and Rory nods in understanding, inches the car forward along with the traffic for a moment before it stands still again, "But I guess I couldn't help but get my hopes up. He came all the way to Stars Hollow and... I thought he was ready, you know? Turns out he was ready ages ago, just not to be _my_ dad. He was ready, years ago, to be Lily's."

If she had been seventeen again, Jess knows that Rory's next words would be 'I'm sorry', but she's twenty-one now and all she does is glance briefly at him to tell him to carry on talking. She knows he hates the pity and the sorrow - had hated it when she gave it to him all that time ago. 

"I stayed for as long as I could. Sarah and Lily are nice enough, and Jimmy tried. But it's been too long," Jess closes his eyes once more, shifts his feet on the seat between them, "Picture's been painted already."

When Rory doesn't say anything for a few moments Jess turns up the radio and manages to get some sleep. He doesn't dream of anything but wakes up with a start anyway just as Rory drives them across the Illinois border. 

"What time is it?" 

"Three. It took two hours to get across the rest of Indiana."

"Pull over and we'll switch."

Rory looks ready to pass out as it is, and she's asleep moments later when Jess pulls them back onto the interstate. She had settled across the back seat so she didn't have to rest against the window, and when the cold air gets too much for Jess he drapes a spare jacket over Rory as she sleeps too. Had Rory not been in the car Jess would pull over into a car park and spend the night there, he'd done it before in sketchier areas, but she is here and she'd already argued with him that her money is just as good as his so they'll use it. 

He finds them a motel in Chicago Heights and leaves Rory in the car while he books a room. The girl behind the counter looks slightly younger than him and bored out of her mind. Jess is surprised they're even open at this time, considering how close they are to the city he'd thought they would make more money shutting down at night than keeping all the electrics on. 

"Just for you?"

"Er, no, my," He pauses for a moment because he's pretty sure 'girlfriend' still isn't the right term - but saying 'I have a girl with me' is just as worse and kind of pervy, "My girlfriend's in the car, too." He has to settle with girlfriend, there really is no other option that doesn't make him sound like a creep. 

"Here," He signs a waiver that says he'll pay for any damage and gets told it's a daily-fee before a key is thrust in his hands and she turns back to the TV. 

Jess moves their bags into the room first and spends a solid three minutes staring the at the lone double bed in the middle of the room. It's obvious why they were given this room. Jess had practically sealed that slice of fate the second he'd said the word 'girlfriend', and he steels himself as he heads back down the steps outside to get Rory. They'd shared a bed two nights in a row anyway, more times than he could count when they were dating before, but that had been a choice each time and he feels like he might be overstepping some kind of unspoken boundary this time. 

"Where are we?" Rory's slumped against him and Jess might as well just be carrying her.

"Chicago Heights, step coming up." Jess manages to navigate her to the room without letting her trip, although it would have gone much easier if she'd actually open her eyes. Ironically, the second he's got the door shut behind them she seems wide awake. 

"They, uh, presumed and I didn't realize until..."

She turns to him with a small smile tugging at her lips and shakes her head, "Jess, it's fine." There's a beat where her cheeks turn red and then like she can't help herself, she says, "Not like we've never slept in the same bed before, right?"

He doesn't want to cross any more boundaries with her, not tonight, because they've crossed so many on this trip already and they're barely four days in, so he lets her make the first move. It's a little awkward, brushing their teeth in the cramped bathroom and navigating across tiny spaces, but they manage it well enough. Rory has the covers pulled halfway down the bed when Jess comes out from the bathroom.

"You want the window?"

He chuckles and stands on the other side of the bed from her, both of them still fully clothed - Rory's still wearing his jacket. "As if there's an option. You hate the window."

Jess feels like he's always watching for her to make the first move, but it's so worth it this time when she smiles at him after a suffocating silence. She kind of rolls her eyes when she realizes what he's doing, but she shrugs the jacket off and drapes it neatly over the desk. Her shirt follows and Jess has to suck in a breath at the exposed skin but relaxes when she raises an eyebrow at him - it's like she's saying 'now you' and he likes this game, knows this game. 

He takes off his shirt as well, follows it with his belt when she doesn't move. Only one of her shoes comes off next and it's his turn to raise an eyebrow at her.

"Perv," Rory mutters under her breath and throws one of the decorative pillows at his chest but unbuttons her jeans anyway. She doesn't even unzip them, just lets her hands fall back to her sides.

"Tease," He shoots back at her, kicks both of his shoes off and undoes the fly his jeans, leaves the button down up just to piss Rory off a little. 

"Jess," She kicks her last shoe off and sits on her knees on the edge of the bed. Jess hadn't realized, before, but both of their breaths are coming out more rapidly now and Rory's chest is a little more flushed than just five minutes ago.

"Rory."

She huffs and rolls her eyes but he joins her on the bed, presses her into the pillows, and drags her zipper down himself. The last time they'd done this, they'd gone down on each other, primarily because that's how Rory had started it, that's what they're good at and because Jess didn't want to kiss her just yet, but this time Rory keeps one hand gripping his bicep to keep him in place as the other flicks the button of his jeans open and pushes them down his legs. He sits up only to peel her jeans off of her, because they're too skinny for her to kick them off as he'd done, and he doesn't really need to pull him back down but she does it anyway. 

The marks on her body from the last time they did this are already fading but Jess kind of likes them like that (because he gets to be around this time to see it) so he sucks new ones right next to them, groans into her skin as she touches him.

He'd taught her how to do this when they were seventeen and hiding in his car just outside of town. She had giggled through it each time, even when she learned quickly and got better, had kissed him when he got loud even though the back road they were on was always empty and long forgotten. She's much more confident now, still giggles at the new sounds he makes, and when his fingers drift over the ticklish parts of her thighs she laughs loudly, but her hands haven't seemed to have forgotten what to do in the past three years. 

Jess is about ninety percent sure he's not giving as good as he's getting, but every time he speeds up his actions a bit, or draws out a moan from her lips, she makes it even better for him. They're playing a one-up game between them and Jess has never been too fond of the teasing with anyone else, but Rory's found a way to tease him even when she's giving him exactly what he wants and it's intoxicating. 

He holds out a little longer than she can, but only barely, and from the slight pout on her lips he can tell that wasn't her plan. That sudden urge to kiss her is back again and he nearly does, but her eyes look too hopeful for it and he has to drop his forehead back to her shoulder. She's a little sweaty, but so is he when she wraps her arms around his shoulders and presses him down to settle his weight on her.

"Jess."

"Don't make me say it."

He can't. Not when he doesn't hear it back. He's not rushing her to reciprocate, doesn't want to hear it unless she means it, but it breaks him every time he says it and there's only so much more damage he can go through. He knows. He knows she's making her way there and that he's doing no harm to her, but that's because all the pain is on him.

She knows that, too, and he knows she does because her body tenses under his and arches into him. 

"Jess," She whispers it this time, _pleads_ , and doesn't say anything else when he rolls them over. They'd been similar in build when they were dating, but they've both changed since then and she feels much lighter now when she settles on his chest and plants her elbows either side of his head to watch him. Her thumbs draw circles into his cheeks and he can't look away from her eyes, not this time.

"I love you."

Jess thinks saying it that first time signed his fate for every other time afterward. He hates whoever's said it feels great saying it. Because it does, but it also rips a hole right through him and leaves him so vulnerable and pliant in the hands of the girl in front of him. 

"You know I do, right?" She finally whispers, drops a chaste kiss to his chin and it's the closest to her lips he's been in three years. It's teasing and a promise for more later. Rory knows he won't go there until _he's_ ready and she seems to respect that. She'll take all the declarations of love she wants from him, drags it out of him every time, but she seems to be respecting this one piece of control Jess has over her. 

"I do," She continues, "I just... I want to say it when I _know_. I know, now, but I don't _know._ "

It doesn't really make any sense to Jess, but he knows he doesn't make sense to her. He'll leave marks on her skin, go down on her, sleep naked beside her, show every level of intimacy she wants, but he won't kiss her. He's drawn a box around it, slashed it with a cross, told himself he won't go there but everything else is fair game. Not like they've gone any further than they have tonight, but Jess knows if Rory turned around in the morning and told him she wanted to then he would.

But he also kind of gets what she's trying to say. He falls asleep with her nose in the crook of his shoulder, and it would be a good night's sleep if it weren't for the lumpy mattress. When he wakes up again, it's too bright in the room because the curtains are shit, but Rory's not moved too far away. She's put a tee-shirt on, which is helpful because Jess knows he wouldn't really pay attention to what she says if she had no shirt on again, and Jess thinks that's a pair of _his_ sweatpants on her legs. 

"Your bags are closer," Is all she says in a way of greeting, goes back to flicking through the TV stations. Jess feels her eyes on his back when he rummages through his bag and changes into another pair of sweats and a sweater; gives her a lazy wink when he leaves the room in search of coffee. 

The machine looks like it's seen better days, and the coffee it spurts out tastes kind of like battery acid has been mixed in with the grounds, but it's the best they'll get - he also takes a little bit of joy in the way Rory grimaces with each sip. 

"I miss Luke's," She mutters when she's down with the coffee, and Jess is a little shocked to find he doesn't tense up at the name anymore. Rory still shoots him a worried glance, only relaxes when he hums in agreement and rests his back against her thighs. 

The TV stations here are worse than the first motel they stayed in, back in New York, but they find an old episode of _The Donna Reed Show_ and they spend forty minutes making fun of it before they can't stand it anymore and turn the TV off altogether.

"You going to phone your mom?"

Her fingers are running through his hair and it's slowly driving him back to sleep. The only thing worth doing in Chicago that was standing during Kerouac's time here is another jazz bar in the city, which they'll probably need to find a closer hotel too if they plan on drinking like New York, but Jess desperately needs a day off the road and thinks Rory needs the same. It's cheap enough here and it won't eat into a chunk of their money to stay another few nights if they needed it. 

His cheek rests on her stomach, so he's heaved up when she sighs deeply, "Later. She texted an SOS but... I think it's about time I spent some time away from her."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I love her and I owe her a lot but she's Stars Hollow, you know? She always wants to help and sometimes it's not the right way. Sometimes I need to figure something out for myself."

"And this is one of those times?"

She whispers her answer so quietly, but it rings loudly in the silent room, "Yeah. This is one of those."

* * *

Rory knows she has to phone her mother today - they'd left Stars Hollow a few days ago and she's been completely radio silent since, had even turned her phone off so she wouldn't have to hear it buzzing with a text or a call, and it's probably driving Lorelai nuts that she doesn't know where Rory is, and can't get in contact with her. She drags it out though. 

Jess drives them into the city and they find a decent enough Mexican restaurant to eat at. It's packed inside so they grab their food and pitch themselves on the curb next to the car. Rory's pretty sure their entire trip will consist of sitting on the side of the sidewalk, chowing down on food that could be better, ignoring the elephant in the room. Jess keeps the conversation flowing well enough, and Rory fills in any gaps between sentences that sit awkwardly between them. 

They haven't talked about last night or the night in New York, and it's not that Rory doesn't regret those nights and what they did, but there's an aching need constantly in the pit of her stomach that wants to tell Jess what he wants to hear. She'd been able to say it to Dean when she was sixteen (eventually) but those moments in between him saying it and when she did Rory regrets with a burning passion. They broke up over it, in that car at Gypsy's, because Rory couldn't say it back, and they may have found their way back to each other but there was a gap and it echoed through the rest of their relationship. Dean was self-conscious about it all the time, especially when Jess came into the picture, and she knows she could have said it to Dean more after that point, but she always seemed to wait until Dean said it first or he started getting annoyed.

Rory loves Jess. Maybe not all at once, but she still loves him. She loves the parts that are so obvious when she looks at him, and she loves the parts that are hidden away when he's far away, the parts she didn't acknowledge until she watched that bus pull out the town square. 

There's a part of Rory that wishes Jess would rush her. Would give her an ultimatum, drag the words out of her mouth already because she can't find the courage to say them - but Jess won't do that. She knows Jess doesn't want to hear it unless she means it, much like Rory doesn't want to say it until she means it, but it's forced them to be stuck in some kind of limbo and she hates it. 

Jess has done the most driving on this trip so far so he crashed into bed as soon as they get back to the motel, and Rory slips out to sit on the hood of the car once she knows he's in a deep enough sleep that the creaky floorboards won't wake him up. 

"Hello?"

"Mom?"

"Rory? Where are you? I thought you went to Lane's but Mrs. Kim said she's not seen you in weeks - not like she would let you crash at hers for more than a night anyway without some kind of lecture that would drag you back home - and Paris said she hasn't seen you since you dropped out and-"

"I'm with Jess."

It's rushed out, sounds kind of like she's scared and trying to hide it, and the longer her mother stays silent on the other end of the phone it freaks her out more. Lorelai despises Jess, she knows. He was growing on her when he stuck around, as much as Rory knew it hurt her mother to admit it, but that car accident was always in the back of her mind and then Jess had flunked out of school, started that fight with Dean, skipped town and didn't tell anyone. So, Jess isn't Lorelai's favorite person right now and the fact that Rory had willingly got into his car and driven away with him (after all she said when they saw him sleeping in his car, after weeks of crying into her mother's shoulder because he'd gone _again_ ) definitely won't be sitting right with her mother any time soon.

"Jess? Luke's Jess?"

"Yes."

"James Dean and Tony Manero wanna-be, left town and showed up again sleeping in his car, _Jess_?"

"Yes."

" _Why_?"

She'd been expecting that question but stupidly hadn't prepared an answer. Rory had created a bubble around herself - and, subconsciously, Jess - since they passed the Connecticut border and she'd switched her phone off, and all thoughts of her mother's questioning and what the town must be thinking had been dumped right at the Connecticut sign as they passed. 

There are a thousand and one answers she could give to her mother. She needs time away; she can't stand seeing Dean's face everywhere she goes around town; Stars Hollow feels too suffocating right now and as much as she loves it she needs to breathe; she wants to be able to just _think_. But none of those answer the Jess question that would follow. There are a thousand and one other answers she could give for that one, but she knows that they won't sit right with her mother either. She doesn't think she ever got over him; it was easier to pretend he didn't exist when he was over two-thousand miles away; that sometimes seeing Luke hurts because it reminds her of Jess; that every time that curtain in the diner rustles when the door opens she expects to see Jess stumble through it; that she knows there's still something there because she's been sleeping in his tee-shirt since he left; that he's not Dean and she needs this right now; that _he loves me, Mom, and I know I love him too but I need to be able to find the words first_. 

"I don't really know how to explain it right now," Rory tries to keep her voice even, but the light from their motel room flicks on through the curtains and Rory wonders if Jess just couldn't stay asleep that long or if she'd spent more time watching the time on her screen than she thought she had before calling her mother. She wishes she'd phone Paris because Paris would give her reasons to come back home and it's easier to find words to say when you're given well-reasoned arguments than a simple word. 

"Not good enough, kiddo, you up and leave town _without as much as a note_ and I have to phone _my mother_ to find out if you crashed at hers or not. Do you know what happens when you admit to Emily Gilmore that you've lost your kid? A three-hour lecture over the phone, that's what, and I tried hanging up but she just phoned Luke's when I disconnected the landline and now I have like three bills coming from the phone company because they clearly don't have a 'my mother's crazy' package like I asked for."

"Mom, I just- I'm not a kid, mom, and I need to do this. Even if it just ends in tears again, it's better than never knowing what will come out of it."

There's a pause where Rory can hear her mother try to settle her breathing, "Where are you?"

"Chicago Heights."

"We have to talk about Yale."

"We will."

"When are you getting back?"

"I don't know."

"Rory-"

"Mom, I promise I'll keep in touch from now on but _I don't know_ ," Rory's not a kid anymore, but it feels like she'll forever be babied by her mother and her town. Jess hasn't been babying her since they'd gotten in the car. He'd made her talk, asked her questions everyone else seemed to be avoiding, responded to her questions sincerely too. It's a give and takes with Jess - sometimes unfairly, Rory demands more out of him sometimes, and Jess takes more from her at other points - but it's grown up and a little scary and _exactly_ what Rory needs. 

"We'll probably end up in California if we make it that far, and I don't know how I'll get back but I'll work it out as I go."

"Rory Gilmore doesn't 'work it out as she goes'. Hun, what's gotten into you?"

Rory sighs and makes eye contact with Jess from where's leaning against their door frame, arms crossed over his chest, and looking a little contemplative. She doesn't think he can hear her from all the way up those steps, but he's close enough that Rory can see the dip of his waist under his shirt and the glint of light bouncing off his ring.

"I grew up." She settles, hangs up the phone when her mother doesn't respond. She switches her phone off again and shoved it deep into the pocket of her jacket. Her mother knows where she is, knows she's safe, heard it all from her own voice, and for now, that's good enough. 

Rory needs time away from Stars Hollow, and her mother just happens to be a big part of that town. It's difficult to distinguish between the two sometimes, and it hurts a little to know she'll be miles away from her mother for the time being, but she knows that her mother's going to be there at the end of the line no matter what happens and she takes comfort in that fact. 

She doesn't move from the car; watches as Jess props the door open with something and walks down to meet her. He doesn't sit with her, just stands right in front of her, and slides his hand around her ankle, his thumb under her sock to rub at the curve there.

"You good?"

"I didn't say as much as I wanted but... yeah," Her smile comes out more reassuring than she expected, feels lighter than she was prepared for, "I'm good."

He gives her a gentle smile and helps her slide off the car, "I'm going to go find some pizza or something."

She leans into his chest for a moment, closes her eyes as he sweeps a fleeting kiss to her temple, "I need a shower."

"Go on up, I'll be back soon."

Rory stands under the spray of hot water and tries to remember what it felt like when they had passed the Stars Hollow sign. It felt like breathing again, so much better than when she had passed it on their way to Yale for the first time. Lorelai had made her get out the car and pose for a picture right next to the sign in her freshman year, and again last year and _again_ this year, because Lorelai's let Stars Hollow wrap her in a blanket she doesn't want to leave and it was a big deal seeing Rory actually go. Rory loves the town and the people and how weird it all is, and that you know exactly what you're going to get each day, but she also always knew at some point she would eventually leave. When Harvard wasn't the dream anymore she knew she had a few more years in that town until her work took her away, or a family she would start or _anything_ that dragged her away. 

Rory knew she would leave, but she never thought it would be at the hands of herself. She can blame Jess, if she really wanted to, because he broke her heart three years ago and she wants answers, but she knows she came on this trip on her own.

It leads her to thoughts of being with Jess when they were seventeen and Jess was fighting battles too old for him, of Rory just wanting to _know_ and never thinking about how Jess felt about it. It leads her to thoughts of realizing she had feelings for Jess even though she was with Dean, and how guilty she had felt after a few days because she didn't feel all that guilty the first time. It leads her to memories of having the two boys on a pedestal, and comparing them to each other the entire time Jess was in town, and how stupid she was for doing that because she can't compare the two like they're the same person when they are so completely different. 

She scrubs at her skin until it's pink and all thoughts of Dean and Stars Hollow and seventeen-year-old Jess trickle down the drain. Just as she shuts the water off and wraps a towel around her, the door to the room shuts with a click and she hears the bedsprings creak as, she presumes, Jess drops onto it. Rory changes into some pajamas quickly and keeps the window open in the bathroom to let out the steam from the shower.

Jess is laid down on the bed, feet still planted firmly on the floor, an arm flung over his eyes. There's a pizza box beside the TV and another take out bag, possibly fries, ontop, but Rory keeps her eyes on the way Jess looks tired and like he's given up on whatever self-control he seemed to have before.

"Did you know?" Jess asks from across the room, never once moving. "When you saw me on that bus?" 

_Did you know I was leaving?_ It's unspoken but so loud between them.

"I had a feeling," She doesn't want to talk about this. Doesn't want to remember what it felt like when she woke up the next morning and it had sunk in that Jess wouldn't come back that time around. But this is how it will work between them now, for the time being at least. They take from each other and want to know answers right there, and have to give later on down the line to make up for it. 

"I didn't want to believe you would actually just leave like that," Rory continues, wants to move because she _needs_ to sit down for this but the only place to sit is on the bed and she can't be that close to Jess right now, "If I didn't believe you would leave that way I could at least pretend that what we had meant more to you. I didn't understand why you would leave like that, or why you would go at all, and it hurt a lot but..."

She doesn't know how to finish that. There's a part of her that understands, knows she can't hold that against him now that he's older and seems to have a better grip on things, but there's a bigger part of her that's still hurt over it all and wants to know _why_. 

It doesn't seem to be the answer he wanted to hear, but he'd said it himself in New York; they're talking now. They both lied when they were younger and it kept them standing still in one spot their entire relationship, and Rory refuses to entertain that behavior again from her part. She came on this trip to get answers, to breathe, and she can't get either if she's lying just to let Jess hear what he wants. 

He wants her to say no, that she had no clue just how far away he was going, that she was so completely clueless about it. Rory knows that's what he wants because it's written all over his face when he sits up and looks at her. He wants to hear it because he wants her to have thought he was the good guy and not the guy that ran at the first sight of trouble. Trouble was piling up on Jess at that point, and she understands now that he left to get to know Jimmy, but also because it was just a way out of all that trouble. 

"I don't blame you," She crosses her arms over her chest, takes a small step towards the bed and towards Jess, takes another when he slackens his shoulders and stops looking like he's ready to run away again. "You were seventeen and... I don't blame you anymore, Jess, so stop letting it eat at you."

It feels like they've broken another barrier between them when he stands and meets her halfway across the room. She buries her nose into the curve of his collar and breathes him in, shudders a little when the cold tips of his fingers rub at the bottom of her neck for a moment before they pull apart and eat. 

When they fall into bed later that night, Rory reaches for him first and waits until his breath evens out until she closes her eyes. He has the car packed and running by the time she's finished waking up and changing the next morning. Jess drives them to South Shore and Rory checks them into a motel within eyesight of the water. She meets him back out at the car and takes his hand to join him on the hood. 

"Did you enjoy California?" She asks, tucks herself into his side when he slings an arm across her shoulders. It's a little scary, sometimes, how easily they've fallen back into that old routine of touching despite the years and distance and words in between them, but it feels so right at the same time.

"Parts of it," Jess slips his free hand into his jacket pocket and knocks their knees together, "The actual city part wasn't as bad as I expected, and Venice was cooler than I thought it would be. I hated the sand, though."

Rory takes a little pleasure in the way Jess watches her when she leaves the bathroom a few hours later when the sun's setting. She's wearing a top Tanna had left her in freshman year and she hadn't had the chance to give back, and it's nowhere near as flashy as the one from New York but Jess's hand doesn't leave her back the entire time they're walking down the street. 

The Green Mill Cocktail Lounge on Broadway isn't as busy as it normally is, according to the bouncer checking their IDs, but it's still decently packed when they make their way to the bar and order drinks. There's a live jazz band and Jess, ever the bad boy stereotype, rolls his eyes when people start an upbeat dance but Rory spots the way his foot taps in the rhythm when he thinks she's not watching.

"So, feeling like Kerouac?"

He chuckles into his drink and takes her by the hand, Rory follows him with her eyes trained on the muscles of his back through his tee shirt as he directs them to an empty booth in the corner. She can still see the band from here, but the dancers on the floor block her vision sometimes, and it's a little quieter here too. She can hear a faint murmur of people's conversations around them blurring into one. 

"So," Jess is speaking again and Rory angles herself in the booth to face him. Their knees together and he moves to cage hers between them, "Talk to me."

"About?"

He shrugs, "What book are you reading?"

It's so typical of them, Rory thinks with a grin, to be in the middle of a bar with a live jazz band and people swinging around each other not ten feet away from them, and they've found the darkest corner - not to make out in, but to talk about books in.

Once the settle into it, their rhythm and easy banter from three years ago comes right back and she doesn't need the second (or even the third) drink to feel lightheaded because that's just what a conversation with Jess does to her. She remembers the first time she got drunk at a college party. She had cried back in her dorm because it felt like spending time with Jess - no regard for consequences just living in the moment, just _being_ \- but she doesn't cry this time when she realizes she's too far away from sober. 

"No," Jess laughs, tries tugging her back into the booth but she shakes her heads and tries to give him that withering stare he'd wanted to see all those years ago, but all that comes out is a sad little pout. 

"Please? Kerouac would."

"Kerouac did a lot of things I refuse to," Jess does slide a little further to her, but still keeps up his resistance act, "Dancing with a girl being one of them."

"Want me to find you a cute guy instead?"

"Rory."

"Come dance with me, please?"

"One song, _I mean it, one_."

Rory has never liked jazz more than she does now because the band lets each song bleed into another without a pause and Jess can't argue that the song's over when they don't know enough about jazz songs to back up their arguments. She thinks he's pretty drunk too, his eyes are a little glazed and he's laughing more freely, spinning her around the dancefloor without complaint. 

When they find their way back to the new hotel they're working off that buzz, but it clings to the corners of their eyes as long as possible. 

"Thank you," Jess whispers when they're sat on the hood of his car watching the water again. He has both of her hands wrapped in his and she's curled between his thighs to battle against the cold. "For coming with me."

Rory nods without saying anything, doesn't want to ruin the moment with a stupid " _you're welcome_ " that Jess doesn't need. The water crashes loudly at the wave breakers a few hundred meters in front of them, there's a couple arguing loudly in an apartment block behind them, and both of those sounds are so loud it's a little evasive for Rory, but that moment between her and Jess is so silent she revels in it.

She squeezes his fingers even though it's so cold she can't even properly feel her own.


	3. Denver, Colorado

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Stars Hollow," He hopes it doesn't sound as bitter as it feels, wraps his free hand around hers when it stills against his thigh, "Not- not all of it, some of it... some of it I miss, but... I didn't do anything. In New York. I... I sat at home and I waited. When she disappeared - again - without leaving any money, or food, or a fucking note... I was seventeen years old and I knew what she was going out for, and I sat at home and I waited for her to come back."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings // mentions of panic attacks, alcohol, possible mental health, loneliness and family issues
> 
> (i'm not sure if there was a need for any trigger warnings in the past chapters, but if there is please let me know and i'll go back and add them!)

Jess likes the road more than he had expected to. When he was sixteen he was convinced he would never leave New York - it was big enough to get lost in, where his name didn't mean anything, Liz couldn't find him the few times she'd go looking - and now that he's left he's convinced he won't go back any time soon. He's a city guy, knew that before Stars Hollow, but there's an appeal to small towns that he understands know.

Stars Hollow had its moments that made Jess stay longer than he wanted to.

He had stayed because of Luke. Because Luke tried more than anyone Jess had ever known before. Because Luke had his expectations for Jess that, in complete honesty, weren't hard to reach but Jess just didn't want to try. Because Luke always cared about him, even when he kicked him out, and just wanted Jess to open his eyes to the good things he was getting. Because Luke gave him a home.

He had stayed because of Rory. Even when they weren't together, and Dean was in the picture and Rory was making excuses for her boyfriend's shitty behaviour. Even when they were together but hitting it rough, with him lying and Rory rebuilding a friendship with the ex-boyfriend that wanted her back. He had stayed because Rory was good, even when she was throwing his words back into his face. Because Rory was Jess's first innocent relationship, where he actually liked the girl and not just what's underneath her clothes. Because he wanted to make it work but the timing wasn't on their side.

But the problem with Stars Hollow is that it'll never change. There'll be new Kirk's, new Taylor's, Babette's, Miss Patty's, Dean's and Rory's. They each have their own little mould in that town and Jess is still unsure if he wants his own mould. He wants one, he knows, wants somewhere he can call home and settle down because he's tired of running away and the easy options, tired of checking off towns on a map; but a Jess-shaped-mold in Stars Hollow makes his skin crawl in all the wrong ways.

And at the same time, so terrifyingly clear for him, he knows that having a place rooted in stone for him probably won't settle. He'd had New York - even when he was in Stars Hollow and never wanted to see the subway again - and he had Luke, but he'd forced both of them out of his hands, let Luke think he was doing it all on purpose because it was easier disappointing him than making Luke feel like he failed.

He knows Luke doesn't see it that way, knew the moment Luke had told him to leave Rory alone, knew when Luke let him sleep in his car, that Jess had let him think Luke failed him anyway - that he'd done more than anyone else had ever done for him, given him a home and the security he should have had years ago, and Jess had thrown in the towel before the game even got started. 

He'd regretted leaving the minute he started yelling at Jimmy in the middle of the street. Jess knew he had more than he deserved at Stars Hollow; that even with the majority of the town against him he didn't deserve Luke's adamant support and parenting, knew that Luke picked up the slack Liz had dropped when he could have just as easily walked away; and he'd been stupid enough to go chasing a parent he knew would just disappoint him all over again. Luke had turned Jimmy away for a reason, he'd specifically told Jimmy not to let Jess get hurt, and Jess had been angry at Luke when he should have just opened his eyes a little bit wider and seen the bigger picture. 

Luke's always been the parent Liz and Jimmy failed to be, and now, even with the knowledge that Luke will let him back any time he wants, it hurts to know that Jess had hurt Luke the same way he'd been hurt by Liz and Jimmy. 

And to top it all off, Liz had moved to Stars Hollow, sober and the complete opposite of everything Jess grew up with and it just reaffirmed everyone's suspicions that he was a bad kid. That he'd been kicked out of New York because he got in trouble and not because Liz had come back from a three-week bender too out of it to walk up to their apartment without falling. 

He knows Lorelai seems to get on alright with Liz, or they're at least friendly enough for Liz to go up and chat to Lorelai during her wedding, and it hurts, even more, to know that all of Lorelai's suspicions of Jess being trouble, no good for her daughter, were confirmed the second Liz skipped into town with her usual 'Jess is difficult but we're trying' script she believes so much in. He'd not necessarily been begging for Lorelai's approval, and he'd never let Rory know, but he'd been hoping to have her on his side when she met Liz. Wanted someone else to look at the woman meant to be his security and connect all the dots; wanted her to turn to him and say 'I get it', see just how different the two women were and maybe cut him some slack when he failed at communicating with Rory. 

But Liz somehow won over the whole town, just fit right into all the craziness, and even when she relapsed it didn't make anyone look at her any differently. Luke had down everything for Liz that he had done for Jess, and it hurt to see Liz welcomed so warmly when _she_ was the one to repeatedly fail.

"It hurts," He says, watching the way Rory's hair moves with the wind around them, the way the light dances in her eyes when she turns to meet his gaze. They'd stopped to get coffee - still nowhere near as good as Luke's - and watch the cars pass by the parking lot, nestled on the hood again with their thighs touching and her fingers leaving trails of fire with the patterns she's drawing over his jeans. 

"What does?" It's the first time they've spoken in thirty minutes, the coffee in his hands cold but her palm warm against his thigh.

Jess can't look at her - at the gleam in her eyes when she realizes this is him opening up, taking the first step without someone behind him getting the road rolling first, can't look at the way some of her hair gets caught at her lip and the shadows her fingers leave across her cheek when she swipes it away - but the road ahead is too busy and the hood of the car too rusty. He settles with watching the way her laces curl and wave with each new gust of wind instead, how there's a piece of mud stuck to the white tip of her sneaker.

"Stars Hollow," He hopes it doesn't sound as bitter as it feels, wraps his free hand around hers when it stills against his thigh, "Not- not _all_ of it, some of it... some of it I miss, but... I didn't do anything. In New York. I... I sat at home and I _waited_. When she disappeared - _again_ \- without leaving any money, or food, or a fucking _note..._ I was seventeen years old and I _knew_ what she was going out for, and I sat at home and I waited for her to come back."

He needs a steady breath, needs Rory's hand flipping in his grasp to lock their fingers together and she does; loops her thumb around his and rubs soothingly against the rough skin of his hand. 

"She was gone for three weeks, and..." Rory's forehead drops to his shoulder, lips ghosting against the material of his jacket and he can feel it on his skin, grips her hand a little tighter when he remembers how empty that apartment had felt, how he was so scared that this time she really wouldn't make it back and how hungry he was at the beginning he nearly phoned the police to go find her.

"And when she came back she was just so _mad_ ," Jess can't get any louder than a whisper, can't bring himself to acknowledge that he's _saying_ all of this out loud, to someone who never knew, "She... I don't know what she expected. I- I was a kid. I was a kid who needed my mom and she left, and then when she came back she didn't explain anything, she just... She sent me away. _She_ failed, and yet everyone just presumed... I was a bad kid anyway, and I was stupid and I acted out but- look at who I had as an example."

Rory doesn't say anything, just carries on rubbing his hand, lets Jess breath before something in him cuts out and he wrenches himself away from the car, needs to stand and pace a little as the anger keeps building. 

" _She-_ _Everyone- Rory,_ " He doesn't quite know why he's begging, but there's tears prickling at his eyes and no one had ever told how painful it all gets when you let the dam break. Rory stays where she is and just curls her knees to her chest, nodding slightly at him to carry on. 

No amount of deep breaths is helping him and he vaguely thinks this might be a panic attack, but it doesn't feel like that one he had in California, or in Luke's bathroom that one time.

"I did some stupid pranks and I pissed off a few people but _come on_ , did I hurt anyone? I played into what they thought I was anyway because..."

"Because?"

Jess curls his hands into fists and rests them against the car, pitches his weight forward to hide his face from her, doesn't like the way the wind feels cold against the tears on his cheeks, "I'd never let anyone down before," He whispers, wishes he had more control because the tears don't stop, "I'd never let anyone down before because the only person I could have was always too high to even look at me most days, and... everyone had _expectations_ in Stars Hollow. I... No one ever had those for me before so... it was just easier to meet their bad ones then let them build them too high."

Rory stretches her leg out and he curls his hand around her ankle, tries not to grip too hard.

"Liz was a drunk and she had more addictions than I can even remember, and she'd _always_ been that way. I was... I was never enough for her to flush them, even when I was the most perfect fucking child possible and... and I was a _kid_ in Stars Hollow and everyone just wrote me off as trouble. I wasn't any worse than _their_ kids half the time, and then Liz comes along suddenly sober because _TJ of all people was worth it for her_ , _he_ was what she needed to go clean and- it really fucking hurt to hear that."

His throat hurts, and everything's too loud in his head. He can't hear the cars anymore, or the sound of Rory scooting closer, but there's a pounding a rush of something that sounds too much like water in his ears. Rory's touch feels blazing against his cheeks, wiping away the wetness there, but he's too hyperaware of the way his eyelashes stick together with each blink and so he clamps his eyes shut and tries to swallow the sob that tears out of him. 

It's a little pathetic how hard he cries after that, and how it's only easier to breathe when Rory rakes her nails down the back of his neck and up to his hair again, but it still takes to long to even everything back out again. Rory's thighs bracket his hips, his knees hitting the car with every heaving breath, but there's a spot on her neck where her perfume is stronger and he lasers into it, tries to drown out all his other senses with the scent of Rory around him. 

"I'm sorry," His lips are dry and they catch against her skin but she doesn't so much as shiver so he carries on, "I let you down and I'm sorry."

"You had no other way out."

"I could have-"

"No," She's stern and pushes him far away enough to cup his cheeks and force eye contact, blue eyes dark and angry, her hands on him soft and caressing to the point where he doesn't feel the least bit embarrassed by his outburst.

"No," Rory repeats, thumb catching the tear from his left eye, "You had to leave and, yes, it was shitty at the time and you can feel bad about it all you like, and, _yes_ , it hurt so much back then, but we both know that was the only way you could think of. Right?"

He nods, leans forward to knock their foreheads together, tries to match his breathing with hers, tries to build himself to the level of control she's got.

"Okay," She says now, softly, "Then stop feeling guilty about something you couldn't help."

"Can I at least feel guilty about hurting you?"

She smiles at him, a little weak at the corners but all teeth and aimed at _him_ , "If it gets me another coffee before we head out, sure."

* * *

Rory knows what she's good at and tries to ignore the stuff she's bad at, but there's a gray zone in there of stuff that she doesn't know _how_ to do. That zone has been bugging her since she was twelve, but there's another aspect to it now and it's taken a Jess-shaped bubble - _and that bugs her_. 

Rory doesn't know how Jess works and it excites a small part in because she gets to do _this_ \- falling for him, the butterflies and the smiles between just the two of them as if they share a non-existent secret - all over again but it terrifies a much louder part of her too. She thought she knew him. She had dated him for months, had been getting to know him even longer than that, and by the time they were talking about prom and suits and limos, Rory had honestly thought that she and Jess were a unit. She'd prided herself on it because Lane and even Paris had said that they moved together and just kind of _fit_ , which was a compliment ten times better than anything she'd heard about her and Dean. She'd prided herself on that so much, in fact, that she'd stopped trying.

She should have known that Jess was far too complex for that, should have known that she didn't really know him at all. It makes sense, three years down the line from that stupid bus, that she realizes this because she actually opens her eyes this time, actually looks at him, and pays attention to the smaller things she'd marked off as quirks and ignored. 

He hums Metallica as he drives sometimes, even when the radio's been playing Coldplay for the last twenty minutes; he prefers hot showers just before he goes to bed than any other time; he's left-handed but when he drives his right hand is more confident on the wheel; when they sit at a diner for food he taps out a quick rhythm on the side of the menu; he _always_ gets the car keys out as soon as the car is in sight, even if they still have to walk the stretch of the parking lot; when he falls asleep against the window he drops his chin to his chest, but when he stretches out on a bed or the backseat he tilts his chin in a way that stretches the cords of muscle in his neck. 

He bits into his lip when Rory looks at him just before she gets her hands on his belt; he tangles their fingers together right before he swears; he can't control himself when he leaves marks on her neck but prefers leaving those marks on her hips where only he can see them; he spends the entire time trying to make it mind-numbingly good for Rory and seems to forget about his own pleasure until Rory brings it out of him; afterward, he's sleepy and more handsy than he is the next morning, still hesitates before pulling her towards him but does it anyway and doesn't know that Rory can't bring herself to make that first move. 

Rory knows _Jess_ , but she doesn't know _him_. It sounds stupid and childish to her, but it's real and frightening. 

Jess drives them the rest of the way into Denver and the ride's a little stilted after what happened in the parking lot, but he reaches for her hand without any hesitation and Rory considers that a win. 

She hadn't known. About _why_ he was sent to Stars Hollow, why he couldn't look Liz in the eye at the wedding, why he was so adamant to leave again - and what he just said doesn't match up to the Liz she saw wandering the streets but, in a way, Rory can see it. She has no reason to think Jess is lying to her, not after his reaction, not after all the steps they're making, and she squashes those questions floating around down. 

She wants to know so much more; why was his upbringing so much different from hers, why didn't he fight it out with the town, why didn't he _say_ something? 

But then Jess pulls her into their new motel room and cradles the back of her head in his palm, brings her closer and trails his other hand down her back, whispers 'thank you' in her ear and clutches her tighter than he ever has before, and none of those questions from before matters. 

He falls asleep in the middle of the bed, exhausted from the drive and the parking lot, so Rory sits outside on the car again to give him some time in the dark. Her phone doesn't have enough battery left to phone her mom, or Luke - like her instincts tell her to do. Luke probably knows about why Jess had come to Stars Hollow to begin with, about Liz and her habits, but the seventeen-year-old in Rory who protected Jess from her mother is coming out in full force, tiny fists slamming into her ribcage, screaming at her to phone Luke, make sure he knows, scream and cry about why he's letting Liz back in like nothing happened. 

She'd known when she was in New York with him, arm wrapped in a cast that he couldn't look too long at without frowning, that he was purposely leading her further away from his apartment - that that was going to be a road she wasn't going to get to travel down - and she wonders how sixteen-year-old Rory would have reacted if she were here now. 

Watching Jess break down like that, vulnerable in a way she doubts he let himself get even in private, made her want to cry; made her want to yell at him to stop, to go back to Jess from three years ago, who she used to never talk to her, who distracted her with breath-taking kisses and wandering fingers. 

"Excuse me-" It cuts her out of the thoughts of dialling Luke's, eyes snapping up to meet a pair of sharp gray eyes, crinkled in the corners as the girl smiles brightly at her.

"Sorry, hi, I'm Morgan," She sticks her hand out, all sharp and cheery movements, her smile never once fading as Rory shakes her hand and introduces herself, "My friends and I are a few doors down, wanted to know if you and your boyfriend wanted to tag along to this club tonight?"

In New York Haley had referred to Jess as 'that boy of yours' the entire night, even her boyfriend had just presumed they were together, and Rory hadn't registered just how natural it felt to hear it even after all of this time until they were long into Chicago. It still feels natural - _right_ \- to hear it, and she's thrown back to Chicago when Jess had been drunk and let it slip that he had told the check-in girl they were together because he didn't know how else to describe it. 

Rory gets it, understands why that's the leap people go for considering they're together and in the middle of nowhere, and she vaguely remembers seeing them as she had wrapped her arm around Jess's middle as they headed from the car to their room. It makes sense, and yet Rory feels selfish in revelling in the feeling once again after everything she's doing to him. 

But there's no way of explaining to this near-stranger what's really going on, why Rory even got into Jess's car to begin with, and so she smiles just as wide as Morgan and nods, "That'd be great, actually."

"Okay," Jess nods sleepily when he wakes up two hours later, wrapped in the blankets and hair all tousled, "When are we going?"

Morgan's friends, a group of around eight, are already pretty buzzed by the time they meet them outside a few minutes past nine, and once they're all on their way to the club Morgan passed Rory a plastic bottle of vodka and lemonade. Jess is a few paces behind, having fit in pretty well with two of the guys tagging along, but he catches her eye and winks at her before turning back to his conversation.

"He's cute," Morgan nudges her, "How long have you been together?"

Rory takes a swing, winces when it's more vodka than anything else, "Feels like ages," She settles with, can't find the right answer when it feels like they never really ended their story all those years ago. 

"Cute," Morgan grins at her, stealing the bottle for a swing before passing it back, "Everything okay? You seemed pretty hung up a while ago."

"Yeah," She's not lying, not when she focuses on the fact that Jess is opening up, that he's not as guarded. She smiles as she thinks back to forty minutes ago when he'd tackled her onto the bed - the _only_ bed in their room, once again - and he'd laughed against her as she tickled him right back, "Yeah we're good. What's happening with you and blondie?"

Morgan blushes, stammering over "nothing" and Rory feels eighteen again, making new friends and just living in the now. The high of it all lasts well into the club, as she lets herself dance with the girls, lets herself wink at Jess over the dancefloor as he leans back in his seat and watches her. She notices when Jess declines the shots the guys are taking, but when she brings him a new beer he takes it with a smile and pulls her onto his lap when there's no more seats.

Jess is warm and a little shiny with sweat from the strobe lights, but she knows she's sticky from spilt drinks on the dancefloor and dancing with the girls, so when Jess traces circles on her bare elbow she doesn't complain, just sinks into his chest and lets herself be dragged into a debate with the rest of the group. When she needs a breather from it all, she's dragged outside with Michael and Lois, coincidentally the only other two names she picked up on this entire night. 

"Jess is cool," Michael says as they perch on the sidewalk and the police try and talk a girl into drinking water and perhaps _not_ vomiting on their windows. 

"Cute, too," Lois knocks her shoulder against Rory's and grins at her, "A little tense, though."

"Yeah," Rory sips at the water in her hands and shakes her head when Michael offers her a cigarette, "It's been a long day."

Michael disappears back inside when his lighter doesn't work and Lois shuffles to sit sideways, facing Rory, "What's up?"

Rory shakes her head again, "It's... it's complicated."

"Are you two really together?" It's startling, how she's managed to pick up on it but Lois just shrugs and picks at her fingernails, "Don't get me wrong, you guys fit but... one of the guys mentioned something when you were dancing and Jess kind of... got quiet?"

"We broke up," Rory sighed, "We were together when we seventeen and... the timing wasn't right and we had this argument a few weeks ago and... he was leaving. He- He left a lot when we were younger and this time he asked me to come and..."

"And?"

"He told me he loves me," Rory can feel the flush on her cheeks, knows this is the first time she's told someone what happened that night, "And I can't say it back just yet, not after everything that's happened and- I don't know, I just... I feel like I'm taking more from him than he's taking from me, or willing to give anyway."

"Huh," Lois kicks at a pebble and Rory looks up finally to meet her eyes, "Want to hear what I think?"

She's a stranger, who only knows the past three and a half hours of Jess and Rory's story, without any back story apart from the basics, and it's exactly what Rory thinks she needs right now, "Yes, please."

"I think," Lois reaches to squeeze her knees then take her hand, "I think you love him and you're scared he's just the same seventeen-year-old who ran away a lot."

"He's proven he's not-"

"Doesn't change anything," Lois shrugs, "You were seventeen and that kind of hurt doesn't just go away, even if you are over it. I think you're protecting yourself even when you're trying to let him in, and I think you're crazy if you think it's not going to have an effect on him. If he's proven he's not the same guy, and if he _asked_ you to come with him, then I think he's putting himself on some kind of line he's never done before and you need to stop hiding from him. Before you hurt him like he hurt you."

It's a little harsh, the way she says it, but she's not wrong and it doesn't hurt hearing it like Rory thought it would. She knows she's toeing the line, playing with the boundaries he's clearly set for himself, and she's not really giving anything in return. 

Twenty minutes later Lois drags her back onto the dance floor with a drink in her hands, slots them together and whispers in her ear that Jess is watching. His gaze is a little heated, watching Rory from this close, and when Rory keeps eye contact with him even as Lois sweeps them across the floor, the gaze only gets darker. 

She pulls him out of the booth and into the middle of the dancefloor pretty quickly after that, likes the way the four beers he's had has loosened him up a little and the way he lets her wiggle one thigh between both of his, pushes their chests together and sets them into a rhythm that matches those around them. 

The music's too loud to talk properly, but he ducks his head so her lips are level with his ear and she takes advantage of it to lean closer, mouth grazing his ear lobe. 

"I don't like Al's that much anymore, and sometimes I feel suffocated when I go back home for the weekend. I tell my Mom I have papers to write some weekends so I don't have to go home, but really I'm just watching movies with Paris when she's not studying," His fingers flex against her hips, pulling her even closer until the button of her jeans catches the zip of his, "I cut my hair short after you left because you said you liked my hair how I used to have it, and I couldn't look at it any longer that way. I didn't go to Liz's wedding because I couldn't stand the thought of seeing you again. I saw you sleeping in your car when you got back, and I was wearing the same coat I did the first time you kissed me outside Doose's when we first got together. I threw it out."

"Rory-"

"I like blueberry pancakes more than I like chocolate chip. I can't stand silk shirts because all my bags keep falling off my shoulders. Sometimes I regret college because it feels like someone else's dream that I've been groomed for, but then there are days where the thought of dropping out feels like the end of the world. I slept with Dean because I was upset and I... I needed _one_ of my relationships to work out and I hate that it was _him_. I regret getting off that bus that day, regret not dragging you off with me."

"Rory," He drags one hand up the length of her body to tug at her hair, now reaching her shoulders, and she lets him mouth at her neck before she tugs him back.

"I don't regret coming on this trip, and I... _God_ , I _do_ , Jess, you have to know I-"

"I know," He cuts her off, grips her chin between his thumb and forefinger and presses their foreheads together, "I _know_ , Rory, don't just say it because I do."

"Can you-" She swallows, doesn't want to be selfish but his eyes dance and there's a gleam there that she never got to see before, " _Please_."

"Rory," He whispers, presses his lips to the corner of her mouth, the closest he's gotten since they were seventeen and fumbling with buttons in the backseat of his car, "I love you."

"I've been selfish," She whispers against his cheek, wonders how he hears but doesn't linger on that thought too much, "I've been so selfish and- if this is going to work it can't be one-sided anymore, Jess. Be selfish with me and we'll- God, I don't know but-"

"We'll figure it out," He reassures her, his smile against her skin infectious, "I'll be selfish as long as you are and we'll work it out."

* * *

Ryan, one of the guys that Jess immediately got on with, has a pack of cigarettes but no lighter and Jess has a lighter but nothing to smoke, so Jess manages to disentangle himself from Rory with the promise of coming back after he gets a smoke. 

"Your girl's cute," Ryan huffs as he sits on the curb, handing Jess his lighter back and arching his neck upwards as he exhales. Jess directs his smoke to the floor, likes the way it disappears into the cracks of the road next to his sneakers. 

He hums, "She's something."

He feels an elbow nudge against his, "You good, man?"

"Yeah," Jess nods, probably the quickest he's ever done before, "Yeah, we're... we're working things out."

"You love her?"

He nods, again, definitely quicker than last time, "I met her when we were seventeen and I... I left before I could figure out how I felt about her, but..."

"You're making up for lost time now?"

Jess thinks of the way it felt to hear her ramble on the dancefloor, the beating of her chest against his, how she sounded so desperate to get all those words out and how she stumbled over her words at the end to the point where Jess panicked she was going to say she loves him. He wants to hear it, thinks he probably won't be able to function if he ever does, but he doesn't want her saying it when she's pleading at him like that. He wants to hear it however she wants to say it, but not like that.

"Sometimes it feels like I'm not going to survive," Jess mutters instead, "If I ever get to hear her say it. I feel like I screwed it up so much at the beginning that she's actually kind of crazy for even coming with me now, and... I want it to work out this time, but it feels like I'm dying sometimes and I think she's the reason for it."

"Like a... good type of dying?" Ryan asks, slowly, and Jess realises that he had been silent so long that most of his cigarette's already gone. 

"Yeah, yeah, definitely a good kind of dying," Jess stubs his cigarette out and wipes his hands on his jeans, turning to grin at Ryan, "So what's going on with you and Morgan?"

Everyone else stumbles out the club around half an hour later, a few minutes before the bouncers head in to clear everyone else out, and Rory and Jess break away from the rest of the group to head back. 

"We'll be here for like two weeks," Morgan says she hugs Rory goodbye, moving to hug Jess too, which only kind of creeps him out but she's pulling away before he can tense up, "Don't be strangers."

Rory's jacket is cold from the coat closet they had to pay four bucks from, but he doesn't so much mind when she curls into his side as they walk and grins up at him. They've definitely crossed some kind of step that he can't name, and he feels like he's seventeen all over again when she closes their motel door after them and presses her back to it, dragging him closer by the belt loops of his jeans. 

The smell of late night clubbing and alcohol has washed away her perfume, but the smell of the vodka and gin she'd been alternating between all night doesn't smell as evil as it did when he was growing up. Jess can't remember how many beers he ended up having, can't remember how much of that god-awful rum and coke mix the guys were having on the walk there he ended up having either, but there's a buzz in his chest that he really quite likes when Rory pulls him closer, trails her lips down the side of his neck. 

It feels different this time, when he pulls away long enough to lift her shirt over her head, almost like they've never done this before. 

And maybe it's because it's not just him anymore, he knows that they're on the same page now, knows she's right there with him. Maybe it's because he's let her in that little bit more, knows that Rory knows him better than anyone else. Or maybe it's something completely different, but he really doesn't care. 

Not when Rory pulls away to gaze up at him, looking perfect with tousled hair and red cheeks, leaning against the door and pulling him to align their chests together. 

He _really_ doesn't care how it's different when Rory bites into her bottom lip, when he tugs it free with his thumb and she doesn't even say anything, just tilts up on her toes and waits there, giving him an out. 

And all thoughts of everything else go flying out the windowwhen he steadies his hands either side of her head on the door and closes the distance between them. 


	4. Somewhere between Denver and California

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is so much different now - time, experience - but they're still the same. He's still Jess and she's still Rory. He can't talk and she can't stop pushing. The problem's all different now but their answer is still the same. Jess hides away and Rory forces into his ground, tries to climb up those walls he's been building for years, and it's like they're both frustrated when she can't get over them. 
> 
> -
> 
> And it's stupid.
> 
> Stupid thinking this trip was even a good idea, or that they could work this all out after so long.

_She kisses more desperately than she used to. Fingers in his hair again, a hint of vodka and lime in her breathe, and Jess can't get enough. The door has to be uncomfortable against her back but she just keeps tugging him closer, a soft hum in the back of his throat as her hands slide down his neck and around to his chest. Kissing Rory is a flurry of memories, and yet it's like this is the first time he's ever undressed her. She's pliant in his hands when he unzips her jeans, but she gives as good as she gets, pushing her mouth against his when he pulls away, nudging his hands out the way so she can undo his belt. She whispers his name against his lips and it's like they're seventeen again. They're in their motel room, he knows, because he couldn't stay any longer in that town and she needed... something, something she hasn't quite told him yet - and he wants to know it all; wants to know if he can still make her coffee order with his eyes closed, if she's still ticklish at the bend of her knee and if she still wants_ him _._

* * *

The TV doesn't seem to ever turn off, something Rory hadn't noticed until now. It gives off a soft hum and a slight grey-blue hue from its edges, and she can hear the quiet static from the screen over the soft rustle of covers when Jess turns and drapes an arm over her waist. "How long have you been up?"

Rory wants to turn and face him, likes the way that the sleep clings to the corners of his eyes in a way that makes him look so much younger, so much more relaxed, but his grip tightens when she twists so she settles back into him again. 

"I don't know," She whispers and trails her hand down the length of his forearm in swirling patterns. Her other hand is trapped between the pillow and the mattress, but when Jess nudges closer he knocks it free and tilts his head up to sink her fingers in his hair. "How's your head?"

"Loud, yours?"

"Busy."

He hums again, flips his hand to catch hers in his grip, and it's easy to fall asleep again when he kisses her neck and cradles her closer.

* * *

_"Rory," He gets a breath in before he ducks to mouth at her neck, and he can't say who moved them first but he's stumbling back towards the bed and Rory's right there with him suddenly, over his hips with her hands by his head when he lays down, "Rory?"_

* * *

Her hair's shorter than it used to be, she uses a different shampoo now and she wears jeans more often than she used to. There's a glint of confidence in her eyes that was never there before, but she still bites her cheek when she catches him looking, and she still follows that same path down his arm with her fingertips when she's not paying attention. 

Her presence in his life is like cold water in the middle of a nightmare, shocking him out of one bad reality into a much more confusing one. She's the same and different all at once, a painful reminder of what he could have had and a hope for what he _can_ have, now that they're older, if she'll let him.

He remembers sneaking into her room one night before everything hit the fan and he ran because it was easier. He could hear Lorelai in the living room with the TV on, knew she could walk in at any moment, but all Rory wanted was to lie down with him and whisper in the dark about some book she was reading for class. He could see her smile even in the dark, knew that every time her fingers paused drawing the pattern on his chest that she was jabbing the space above them with a new point. It was so stupidly domestic, so innocent, and Jess didn't deserve it. He knew it even then. 

He lied, to Rory and Luke and Lorelai and _everyone_ , and he was in way too deep now to come out the other side unscathed. Jimmy was bugging about California, and his car was still gone, and Liz was apparently seeing this new guy and trying to stay sober and it was all too _much_. He'd let himself be selfish that one night with Rory, let himself lie to her again and again, let go on about prom and how excited she was. And even when he was in California it all stung. It hurt to know that she was hurting, that _he_ did that.

And she's here now, looking at him from the other side of the room, phone in one hand and her coat in the other like she's ready to leave and Jess can't feel his legs to stand up. She might start crying, there's a wobble in her bottom lip and it cuts right through him when he opens his mouth but nothing comes out. 

* * *

_He can't bring himself to ask. Can't bear to hear her say no, or shatter this small pause in reality that she's granted him. She's kissing down his chest and he's too far away, his fingers just skim her shoulder as she slides off of him completely. She whispers his name again, and he thinks he hears her say it's okay, but there's a rustle of fabric much louder than her voice and then she's back with him again, cupping his neck in one hand and angling his chin with the other. She whispers his name one more time, lets go of him to touch his wrists and drag his hands up her sides. "Jess?"_

* * *

Her mom had this saying she always liked to dish out. Something about a moving car and just wanting to be in the passenger seat, but the doors are locked and the driver keeps pressing on the gas, and you're holding onto the bumper until you have to let go because you're bruised and the driver won't even unlock the door, much less help you inside.

Jess had felt like the moving car and the driver and the lock and the road all at once, back when she was seventeen and didn't know any better. She knows better now, or at least she's trying to convince herself she does.

Jess feels different and so familiar all at once, still the same hurricane he was all those years ago. It's like it used to be - Jess kisses her oh-so-sweetly and he'll trail his fingers down her back in that way he knows she likes, they'll get lost in hours of books and they'll only talk about things that stop mattering soon after. He wears that same boyish-grin on his face when he flirts with her, even curled around her in bed, and it widens when she flirts back or when she trails her hand through his hair and presses her toes to his shins. 

But he won't talk. Not about the big stuff, or about Luke or Liz or _anything_ that _matters_. 

"I can drive you home," And it's been an hour and _that's_ what he settles on. _That's_ his solution. 

"I don't want to go home," She grinds out. She doesn't know why she picked up her coat, or her phone, or why she'd struggled into her shoes while trying to not look at him. Because they were _fine_. They'd an absurdly _amazing_ night and it _just_ felt like she could open her mouth and say _it_ , but something else came out instead and now they're in that too-familiar standoff. Jess against the world. And Rory hates it.

He looks so tired when he scrubs his jaw with his hand, so much older than twenty-one, but then he ducks his head down so she can't see him and it's like losing him all over again. She remembers this. The disagreements that never really turned into arguments, the hiding away, the forgetting instead of forgiving. 

Everything is so much different now - time, experience, _now_ \- but they're still the same. He's still Jess and she's still Rory. He can't talk and she can't stop pushing. The problem's all different now but their answer is still the same. Jess hides away and Rory forces into his ground, tries to climb up those walls he's been building for years, and it's like they're _both_ frustrated when she can't get over them. 

"Rory-" He stops quickly, just her name, and she tries to act like she's not heartbroken at the shift in their day. It's barely half-nine, the sky still a tainted orange colour at the edges, and she wants to blame the alcohol still clinging to her system about all of this. But she can't. 

Because _this_ is just them.

"Rory," Jess tries again, and he stands up this time, already reaching for his keys, "Come on, I'll drive you home."

"Jess, I _don't want_ to go home-"

"I _know_ ," Jess shouts, "Just get in the damn car, Ror-"

" _No,_ I don't want-"

"I _know_ you don't want to go home, Rory, I _know_ you _want_ to talk-"

"Then why can't we?"

Opposite sides of the bed, Jess's eyes burning into hers, his fingers curled around his keys. Twenty-eight hours back to Connecticut. Seventeen to California. He's barely three feet away from her.

She wants to cry and she doesn't want him to know, because then he'll freak out and his answer for that is just to leave. He'll go for a drive and she was always worried he'd get in a crash whenever he drove in that state, could never really breathe right until she saw his monstrosity of a car cruise through Stars Hollow again. 

Rory scratches at her temple and takes a calming breath, sees Jess shift his weight from one foot to another, "Jess, _please._ Please just... Why won't you talk to me?"

* * *

 _He kisses her to wipe that confused look off of her face, to distract her from his inner-freakout. She's there, in his lap and carding through his hair with her nails, and he can pretend. For an hour or two or however long. He can pretend he's grown up a bit since he left her, that he can handle this -_ her _\- now. If he has to pretend that he can look at her without freezing, without needing to concentrate a little harder on breathing, he can get through this._

_But it was so much easier when she wasn't there. When he was in California and she was at Yale, or Europe or wherever her plans led her to after that bus. He could breathe right then. Without looking at her every day and when the possibility of waking up beside her in the morning was just that; a possibility. Rory learnt a lot when they were apart, and Jess hadn't. He can't talk about why he's like this without feeling bile rise up, can't stop the panic rushing in and fogging everything around him. He needs to breathe and he needs to keep kissing Rory, needs to show her that he's not that fumbling idiot she pushed away at the party, that he's older and more in tune with her in some way that just doesn't make sense._

_She says his name again, teeth sinking into his bottom lip and he only pulls away from her to make sure she's not freaking out again. That he's not overstepping a boundary. She's flushed and looks dazed in that way he always aimed for in the back of his car, so he twists his fingers in her shirt and drags it up until all he can do with it is drop it to the floor._

* * *

For a moment, Jess hovers the keys by the ignition and Rory stares straight ahead at the motel sign. He'd had to get out of that room, air too heavy and stale to think straight in, and Rory had only followed when he promised they would just take a drive to find some decent coffee - but now they're in the car he's forgotten why they came out. 

She wants him to talk, to explain, and he knows that she gets it. The part she already knows. That part she's already defended, already told him not to feel sorry for, and he'd been stupid enough to believe she would drop it altogether, that she would take that as the whole story. Rory Gilmore has never taken what he's said as just face value, he should know better.

Before he can try and come up with something though, Rory sighs gently beside him, "It's like... sometimes it feels like you're addicted to saying goodbye."

When he looks over at her she won't meet his eye, and they've gone back to square one. 

* * *

_He catalogues every little sound she makes and clings to her with every movement. She has a hand on his back, another on his neck, and he's flown back to hovering over her in his car as she whispers 'not yet', seventeen and wide-eyed and the use of 'yet' had him soaring. They never really talked about it, she'd just told him to keep thinking what he was thinking, and that did it for Jess. He'd wanted to, God did he want to, with her, but timing never was his strong suit back then. He gets her now, twenty-one and miles away from everything else, and he owes it to her for coming with him, for giving him another chance he doesn't deserve. He surges forward to kiss her, to pry her teeth from her lip once more, and it's easier to copy the curve of her mouth when she smiles._

* * *

They drive around for half an hour before they find a diner. The ride was silent and the music in the diner feels too loud afterwards. 

The waitress on duty eyes up Jess as she leads them to their seats and Rory only knows she still cares about it all because she feels that regular pull in her chest when she catches the appreciative up-and-down aimed at Jess. 

And it's stupid.

Stupid thinking this trip was even a good idea, or that they could work this all out after so long. They worked well together when they were teenagers, sure, but they were also so, _so bad_ for each other too. Complete polar opposites and Rory knows she's not innocent in their break-up but that just makes it all so much worse. Her mother has a story, about Jess, and she sticks to it. Everyone in town told her she had dodged a bullet when Jess skipped town, _again_ , and with time it was so much easier to fall into that protective bubble Stars Hollow was building for her. 

Jess was exciting when he was around, but he's the kind of guy to offer something and back out within thirty seconds. 

The table they get sat out has a peeling plastic cover, stained with coffee rings and littered with small dents from long-gone diners. It's a far cry from Luke's - the space too large, walls slapped with splotches of color and shapes, uniforms _mandatory -_ but the fact that it's a diner seems to be a buffer for Jess. He'd always looked at home behind the counter at Luke's, she remembers, the work keeping his hands busy and the small gaps between customers long enough for him to submerge in a book. Rory used to love getting off the Hartford bus and seeing Jess through the window, customers barely finished paying before he was slapping his book back on the counter and untucking his pen from behind his ear. Not relaxed, though, always on guard.

She orders a large coffee and Jess gets the same with a plate of fries. They sit in silence, studying opposite ends of the diner until the waitress comes back with their order, disgruntled when Jess says Rory's name and nudges the fries to the middle so they can share. 

Rory eats two fries in silence before Jess sits up straight, "Are you-" He pauses again and chugs half his coffee, fingers twiddling the cup nervously, "Are you sure you don't want to go home?"

She bites back a sigh, doesn't want to be condescending in any form, and nibbles on a fry as she tries to figure out how to say it all. There's so much she wants to say, wants to _know_ , and she's been naive enough to believe she would get there when he was ready. Jess isn't the kind of guy to _be_ ready, and he knows it too. He can hate Rory all he wants for pushing him, but he _knows_ it.

"Why is your answer always to run away?"

"Rory-"

"No, I get it," She pushes the fries away, sick all of a sudden, "I get it. Liz was shitty, and most of Stars Hollow was even crappier but- But... are you not tired of it?"

"Of what?"

"Jess-" She huffs.

"Rory, I-" He cuts himself off as the waitress comes over to refill their coffees even though they haven't asked, and Rory doesn't miss it when she sees Jess lean sideways to meet Rory's eyes past the coffee mug. He waits a few moments after the waitress disappears, then scrubs his face with both hands and knocks his knuckles against the table, "I'm not... I'm not _you_ , Rory. I can't just start talking and feel good about it, or feel good enough about it to start talking in the first place. I was never... Liz never cared. About me or what I had to say, none of it mattered to her. Jimmy walked out before I was born and even when I was with him in Cali it was a no-go. He wants to hear what his other kid has to say, but I'm always going to be that mistake from New York that he's making a half-assed attempt to fix. I can't... they're my role models. Whether I like it or not. Grew up with one and kept hearing nothing but crap about the other and- I'm not..."

"They're not your only role models though-"

"Luke doesn't count."

"Why-?" Luke's her role model. One of them, anyway. Been her role model since she was five, whether or not he likes it, and she's not even related to him. She's always just presumed that was a mutual thing between her and Jess - that feeling towards Luke. 

"Luke fixes Liz's messes," Jess shrugs, so casually despite the bitterness in his voice and it breaks Rory a little, "He tracked us down after each move and every phone number and... Liz sent everything to Luke. Bills and late-fee payments. She broke a vase once; packed it up in a box and shipped it off to Luke. I broke my elbow when I was twelve and he paid the hospital fees. I got suspended the first time at High School and he drove up to speak to the principal-" He breaks off with a sigh and looks out the window beside them, nails scratching a peel of plastic hanging precariously off the table. 

When he turns back to Rory, his eyes are rimmed a little red and he's speaking slower, "I grew up with Liz telling me that Luke fixes things. _Mistakes_. She disappeared for- She kept relapsing and leaving-... She shipped me off to Luke's. That's it. I was just a mistake she made and needed Luke to fix. And you know he never once said no. Or couldn't fix something. Every single time, he came and he fixed it. So yeah, he's great and all, and he tried way harder than I deserved, but it's a little difficult to look up to him like that when I'm the one mistake he couldn't fix."

She doesn't know what to say, just brings her coffee to her lips as Jess starts picking at the fries, both now long cold. 

"You're not a mistake," She whispers when they're back in his car, waiting for the heaters to kick in before Jess starts driving again.

It's not enough, she knows, and kind of pathetic after everything he let out, but it feels like progress when he reaches across to knot their fingers together on her thigh. 

* * *

_"Head still busy?" He murmurs into her shoulder, kissing down the tilt of her collar to nuzzle against the underside of her jaw. She murmurs something tiredly, but rolls over and cups his cheek to peck his mouth._

_"Not so much."_

_"Want to get dressed and we can go find some coffee?"_

_She nods tiredly and this is a whole new side of her he gets to see now. There's a press of her lips to the part of his arm she can reach between them, fingers coiling around his palm with no effort to move further away. She looks calm, relaxed, except for the pinch of her eyebrow._

_"What's this?" He taps right above the crease she's made between her brows, smoothing it out with his thumb, and immediately wishes he never asked when she looks at him with_ that _look._

_"Why did you go? Really."_

* * *

Rory packs their room up whilst he gets snacks and drinks for the road. He doesn't know which direction he's going to take; if California's still the right move or if he should just head back to Stars Hollow. He's basically kidnapped Rory and word would have spread around by now, and it's even worse considering Rory's only phoned her mother once and Jess hasn't bothered to pick up the phone at all. He wants to lock the doors and drive her back to Lorelai's, refuse to take her anywhere else. It'd be easier, for her, and for him, if they just went back to pretending they weren't more than they actually were. 

But he also desperately wants to take her to California. Finish what they started when she got into his car. Wants to drag her around Venice Beach, taint all of his Rory-free-memories with her presence there, wants to risk running into Jimmy just so he can show him how well he's doing with Rory, how much progress they're making. And he knows Rory wants to go. Wants to go all the way to California and soak up the sun a little, see the Beats Museum and Kerouac Alley and everything else with it. 

She's waiting by the door when he parks up a few minutes later. She's tapping her phone against her bottom lip, staring off into space and he nudges his toes against hers to snap her out of it.

"Everything okay?" He murmurs, wants to reach out and push her hair behind her ear. They'd made so much progress in the two weeks they've been together. He'd just gotten used to being allowed to reach for her whenever he wanted again, had indulged in it last night after years of imagining what it would have been like. He'd held her hand on the drive back from the diner, needed the sense of her fingers squeezing his to ground him, but there's still a block between them that's too loud and dark for him to battle through alone.

Rory nods and sways forward gently, hand falling to his hip, her palm barely skimming the fabric of his shirt before she pauses, teeth in her lip and brows drawn together. Her pinkie finger makes the first move, tapping against his back gently, and Jess steps further into her in a silent invitation, greedily seeking the contact they've been avoiding all morning. 

He slides his hand around her neck, nails scratching that spot at the bottom of her scalp he knows relaxes her, and he sighs when Rory squeezes his hip in her hand. 

"I'm trying," She whispers into his shoulder, breath warm against his shirt and making the hairs on his arms stand, "I... I'm so tired of not knowing, Jess. What we could have been. I'm tired of it."

"I am too," He presses to her temple and tries to take control of his surroundings again. He feels like he's swaying, or maybe they're both rocking together but he doesn't know and it's too much to keep his eyes open and figure it out, "I'm sorry."

Rory's arm comes up and circles around his waist, leaning further into him. Everything stops swaying, or they stop rocking, he's still not sure.

"I never expected anything from you that I knew you couldn't do already," Her arm stays around him, hand on his hip, as she pulls back enough to meet his eye, thumb stroking under his shirt now, "I didn't realise... I didn't know you were going through all of that. I'm sorry for thinking you were just slacking."

He nods and swallows around the lump in his throat, "I'm sorry I couldn't take you to prom. I really tried."

She smiles at him, a hint of teeth but that gleam in her eyes that tells him it's all long gone, "I know. You said you did and I believe you."

He pauses again for another breath and knocks their foreheads together, smells mint on her breath and strawberries in her hair, "I'm trying. I... I'm tired of pushing you away. Just- just bear with me, Ror."

"I missed that," She smiles at him now, all teeth, "You calling me Ror. I've missed _you_."

"Yeah?"

She hums and nods, stepping forward to nudge a foot between both of his, hips flushed together and one hand sliding up his side to bury in his hair.

"I missed you, too." He whispers, pressing his lips to the corner of her mouth and exhaling. 

They promised that group from last night that they'd stay around for a few days, hang out or head back to that club with them, but he's desperate to get out of that room and the fight from this morning, and Rory doesn't seem all that eager to stay either. It's her turn to drive but he needs something to do with his hands so he slides behind the wheel and lets Rory rest her feet on his thigh as he sets them down the highway heading West.

* * *

_His blood runs cold from a simple question and Rory must notice him tensing because something in her eyes looks like it's breaking as she gives him space, retreating to the other side of the mattress._

_"We've talked about that, Rory."_

_"No, we haven't-"_

_"Well then why start_ now _?" They're naked in bed, the smell of last night still lingering on the stretches of sheets between them, and Rory must not like the reminder because she throws them off of her and slips into a shirt. She starts a rant too fast to really understand and Jess follows her movements, sliding into a pair of jeans as he tries to keep up with what Rory's saying._

 _"- And you won't_ talk _to me! I thought after- before- we_ never _talked! We never talked and look where we ended up, Jess!"_

 _"No, you just went and talked to_ Dean _-"_

 _"Since when was this about_ Dean _-?"_

_He huffs and digs the heel of his palms into his eyes, uses the sharp stab behind his eyelids to ground him back to reality and not in the memories of how jealous he used to get about Dean._

_"Can we just start ove-"_

_"No, no we can't just start over. Because starting over means we're right back to square one and you don't talk to me-"_

_"I don't_ want _to talk, Rory! I'm not good at talking. Talking doesn't_ help _."_

_"How do you know? You never-"_

_"Because I didn't grow up with Lorelai, Rory! I didn't grow up with the white picket fence or a_ mom, _I'm not_ you _."_

* * *

They're surrounded by mountains and Rory wonders how much she's missed when she based her entire life around Connecticut, around Yale and her mother. The trip's opened her eyes to how relaxed Jess is on the road, shoulders not as tense as they were behind that diner counter, hands gliding over the wheel smoothly. Rory's a good driver, she knows, but Jess looks at home behind the wheel - too peaceful to be the guy she knew back in Stars Hollow. 

"You still need a hair cut," She finds herself saying, cutting into the silence. They haven't said much since they got in the car, and Rory had been happy to bask in the knowledge that they're getting _somewhere_. He drops his hand now to squeeze her ankle on his lap before lifting it back to the wheel, seemingly happy keeping the car steady with both hands loosely at the bottom of the wheel, fingers tapping along to the radio. 

"We're gonna have to stop soon for gas," He says, and Rory watches as he lifts a hand to turn the radio down, "I'll get it done if we can find a place."

She's knawed her thumbnail down by the time they pull into a small town in the middle of the mountains. She can't remember the name on the sign they passed a few moments ago, hyperaware of Jess's thumb under the cuff of her jeans, rubbing soothingly after he parks and she doesn't make a move to get out the car. She's propped against the window, feet still in his lap, eyes on him but mind on a few hours ago, where his mouth twisted around Dean's name and that same flare of anger sparked in his eyes.

She's seventeen and unsure how to handle a second boyfriend - unsure how to handle an ex. She'd overlooked so much with Dean, squashed down all the bad because of all the good, because her mom loved him, because Stars Hollow loved him. It had been unfair, to Dean _and_ Jess, when Jess came into town and Rory couldn't make up her mind. It had been unfair to Jess when she kissed him at the wedding, running back to Dean and away to Washington. It had been unfair to Jess when she came back to town and straight to Dean, and unfair to Dean when she got jealous over Shane and Jess's hands all over her. 

And it really wasn't fair to Jess when they were together, _finally_ , only for Rory to start rekindling that friendship with Dean. She knew they didn't like each other, and Dean had even told her explicitly that he disliked Jess, that it didn't seem right, but she missed her friend. At that point, friend and ex-boyfriend were completely different things, and she'd been so desperate to get her friend back she didn't realise just how unfair it was for Jess to see her with Dean. 

Jess wasn't perfect, and neither was Rory and neither was Dean, but that didn't make it fair.

"I'm sorry about this morning," Jess sucks in a breath and looks away from her when she talks, but she's tired of Jess hiding away from her, needs him to know she means what she's about to say. Jess seems to lean into her when she sits up and shuffles closer, but he only looks at her when she puts two fingers on his chin and tilts it her way.

He looks a little pained, like he's reliving it, and Rory gets flashes of the argument all over again. How she chose the _worst_ possible time to ask that question and watched it all blow up in her face. 

"I- I keep trying to get you to talk and I won't even talk to you."

Jess sighs and she feels it ghost along the back of her hand seconds before he cups it in his palm and slides it further along his cheek, tilting his head to kiss the inside of her wrist.

"I didn't realise you had much to say," He murmurs against her skin, lips a little chapped like he's been chewing them as he drove, "I thought you came with me to hear _me_ talk."

"I did, but that's unfair," Her leg's beginning to cramp and she shifts a little, tries to hide a smile when Jess drops his free hand to lift her thigh over hers and bring her closer, "I was being selfish when I chose to come with you and... and I can't get mad about you not talking if I won't either. So... we agreed to be selfish, right?" He nods, eyes closed and lips pursed again to kiss her wrist once more, fingers flexing around hers and she nods too, "Good. Then whatever you want to ask, or know... I'll talk when you don't want to and all you have to do is listen. Deal?"

"You're gonna make me talk after, huh?"

"Eye for an eye," She's pleased when he bites back a huff and turns his head to look at her properly. Her fingers fall from his cheek but his hand falls with it until it's sat on his lap, his thumb stroking her palm slowly, "Meet me in the middle, Jess."

He'd looked calm when he drove - a far cry from the Jess promising prom tickets and wanting to leave parties after Lane's band performed - but _this_ Jess looks a whole lot wiser. His mouth sticks in a straight line when he nods at her, agrees to meet her halfway, but he's not frowning and he doesn't look upset, just leans in to kiss her forehead and open the door behind her, "Haircut first."

He buys her a coffee from the gas station which tastes like dry dirt, but he holds her hand as they wander down the street and smiles at her when she buys a postcard for her mother. "Ten minutes," He sighs, falling next to her on the bench and stealing her coffee.

"Okay," She murmurs without really taking in what she's saying. She'd dug a pen out of Jess's coat pocket before he went to find a barber and tried to come up with a good enough message for her mother, but can't really come up with anything past _'Hi Mom'._ There's a whole lot that she wants to say, _needs_ to say, but she can't fit it all on a postcard. 

She feels Jess's hand on her shoulder, squeezing soothingly and she scribbles down ' _and Luke'_ next to what she's got, rushing out a generic message about how they're both alright, where they are, what the plan is so far. She leaves out anything personal, about her and him and them, and knows it will drive her mother crazy not knowing - but this is _her_ time. She's in a town that feels like Stars Hollow, and she has Jess and stretches of road ahead of them to figure it all out, come up with a good enough story to tell her mother.

She writes Luke's address, knows he'll appreciate the update about Jess and will be the easier party to win over, and she gets Jess to lick the back of the stamp because it tastes gross and won't stick otherwise. He pulls a face but does it anyway, shoving the rest of them in his coat pocket for another time.

"You didn't have to get so many," She pokes him as they head towards the post box, likes the way he just pokes her back and throws an arm around her again.

He shrugs and tugs her a little closer so their thighs rub as they walk, "You might want to send out another one." Is all he says and it's not a lot, but it feels like 22.8 miles and knowing that he cares at least.

He gets his hair cut and she teases him about the way his mouth twists every time the barber touched his hair, snaps a picture of him in the gown with mused hair and refuses to delete it when he glares at her.

And then he gets out of the chair, already running his hand through the shorter locks, in that same Metalica shirt Luke had threatened to throw out, and he looks seventeen again. So much like the Jess she lost all those years ago and she doesn't quite know how to handle it. He either doesn't notice or doesn't say anything, buying them cheeseburgers from a stand by the gas station and they sit on the hood of his car again watching the trees in the mountain sway as they eat. 

"Being selfish?" He says gently once they finished eating. Rory can't remember when they moved but he's between her thighs now, his back to her chest and her arms around his shoulders to rest on his chest. His hair smells like the barbershop and is soft against her chin, his knee knocking against her shin.

She hums in answer, knowing that the conversations coming next won't be pleasant for either of them - but she's ready for them. She'd always known, even when they were younger, that these would come around at some point and there's a part of her that's glad they came around later than she originally wanted. They couldn't have handled this at seventeen, not the right way, but Rory's positive that they're going to come out the other side of it this time. They're going to leave this limbo stage they're in behind them and they'll be fine, she _knows_ it.

"Do you want me to go first?" She matches his tone, carries on drawing patterns above his tee-shirt because her fingers can't keep still when he's around. 

"Can you?" He murmurs, tilts his head back to rest against her shoulder and she watches the tension in his neck when he swallows, sees his eyelashes flutter as she traces the movement down to his collar. 

"Where do you want me to start?"

He swallows again and she can't hide the blush on her cheeks when he turns to push their fronts together, can't help the sigh when he kisses her mouth and sucks at her bottom lip. She knows where he's going with it, knows what he's about to ask of her, and so she melts into it, cards her fingers through his newly cut hair and gives it a tug at the back where she knows he likes.

They're back in the car, Rory just pulling them back onto the interstate when Jess sighs heavily and leans his back against the window to look at her, "Tell me about Dean."

* * *

He doesn't want to hear about Dean. Doesn't want an inside scoop of their relationship, especially not when he knows they slept together recently, not when Jess was the one to leave and Dean had the chance to pick up the pieces he left behind. 

But Dean was a big part of their story, of him and Rory, and it doesn't matter how many years go by since that first kiss at Sookie's wedding, Jess knows that won't change. Dean had a right to be angry at Jess, had a right to be jealous and uneasy with the fact that Rory was hanging out with him - Jess knows all of this because the minute he and Rory got together, _he_ began feeling the same way. He can remember tearing that sign off the lamppost when he spotted their names together, can remember how it felt to watch those two bump into each other at the fair and how he wanted to bundle Rory up, take her away from him. 

Rory looks almost glad to be behind the wheel now that he's asked - like if she were in his seat she would be panicking with nothing else to concentrate on but the question. Her fingers tighten on the wheel and he sees her start chewing at the inside of her cheek, lets the silence eat into the car until she's ready to start talking. The tape in the stereo is long over, needs rewinding before it will start again but Jess's arms feel like stone and he can't lift them. Not until she starts talking. 

He thinks while he's waiting for her to answer. 

Thinks it was a terrible topic to start it on - he could ask about Yale, or her mother or Luke or _anything_. Thinks she's going to ask about Shane once she's done talking, or about other girls and it leads to thoughts about whether there were other guys for her while he was gone. Dean he can just barely handle - he knows Dean, knows his shitty parts and the Golden-Boy version of him; but he doesn't know the others. Doesn't know if they look more like Dean - tall, _stupidly_ tall, boy-next-door that the mothers love, those stupid boots he always wore - or if they look more like him - not as tall, always brooding, good chance of being constantly bruised, books tucked into back pockets and worn-in band tee shirts - and it kills him. It was easy in California, easy to think that he wasn't Rory's type anyway and she would run along with a Dean the second or something along those lines; that Jess was just an experiment along the way. But knowing, finding out, feels so much worse.

Thinks maybe she understands, now, why he won't talk. Because it's been four minutes and she's not come up with the words to say yet, and he hopes she's got a taste or what it's like for him every time.

He's not sure if he's relieved or terrified when she starts talking, "What- What exactly did you want to know?"

"Did you mean all of that stuff? About him?" He lifts his heel to rest against the seat and starts tapping his fingers against his stomach in the tune of a song he can't remember the name of, needs a distraction. "Before we got together and I asked why you were with him, did you mean it?"

 _He's sweet, he's a good listener, he always wants to spend time with me_.

Rory exhales and taps her fingers twice against the wheel before nodding slowly, "I mean, I was... what? Seventeen? Well, sixteen when we got together and... yeah, yeah I meant it. At the time. He was... for a first boyfriend, yeah I guess I won the jackpot. He was sweet and he didn't mind that I went off to a different school the day after I met him, and he made time for me between his friends and all his clubs and... At the time, I meant it. Yes."

"At the time? What about now?"

The cars around them have slowly grown thicker, and they have to stop now for the heavy traffic. It's rush hour for the way home and it doesn't look like the interstate's going to clear out as quickly as Rory apparently wants it to. She folds her arms across the wheel and rests her cheek against it, looking at Jess for the first time in twenty minutes, eyes a little dull. 

"I kept ignoring all the bad stuff because everyone loved him and... and I did too. I think. Everything's love at sixteen. And it was- it worked for me. Ignoring it all. I didn't really like all the missed calls whenever I wasn't around, or how I chose time with him over my Mom. I... you never made me choose. When we were together, you knew I had plans with my Mom and you respected that, even if that was your only night off for a few days and- I don't know. I always felt guilty having to cancel on Dean, or telling him I just didn't want to hang out. It didn't feel normal not wanting to spend time with him. And Mom loved him, which was an even bigger tick on his list, but... ignoring everything I didn't like just wasn't..." She trails off, looks at him for help.

Swallowing around the lump in his throat, trying not to hang over the fact that she loved him, "Healthy?"

She nods and closes her eyes, sighs and looks more relaxed now, "I can't compare you two. I always did that before and look where that got us. I ignored aspects of my relationship with both of you and then tried to have a relationship with you and a friendship with him at the same time and... I was seventeen and didn't want to hurt anyone. I meant everything I said then and, sure, I'm older now and I know better but I can't just take that back."

"What about what happened before the wedding? Liz's."

Her mouth twists up and he almost regrets asking, but then her voice rings out in his head about being selfish, how they both should be, and he swallows that down too. Rory wants him to talk, wants him to listen, wants them to grow and he honestly doesn't think he can grow with her if he's stuck in the dark about her ex. Had it been anyone else he could have - could have shoved it all in a dark closet and never looked at it again, but this is Dean and that stems way further than anything else between them.

"He told me his marriage was over, that they were separated and he wanted to be friends again. We didn't talk much once I went off to Yale and... I don't know. Everything was different and I was stressed about it all changing. I just wanted _one_ thing back to normal, and I chose a really crappy thing to do. I didn't even- It wasn't planned or anything. We were hanging out and I wasn't sure if it _was_ just hanging out or if it was a date and then... then you showed up at Yale and I sent you both away and it just. It just hit me. Everything was so different and I _still_ had the same choice from two years before and-" She cuts herself off and opens her eyes again, looks at him all sad and he knows where she's going anyway. 

He uses the toe of his trainer to nudge at her thigh and shoot her a small smile, can't find his voice to tell her it was alright. It's going to hurt; already does; but they're doing this. She's talking and he's listening, and then he'll talk and she'll listen and they'll both get hurt but they're going to pull through.

Rory sits up and drops her hands from the wheel, edges the car a little bit further ahead with the hitch of traffic before they stop again.

"I had that choice once already, and I chose you. I let myself put you in the way of me and Dean and then..." He braces himself to hear 'you left', for the blame he deserves, but she just twiddles his shoelace between two of her fingers and keeps her eyes trained on the knot there, "And then it all blew up. We didn't work as well as I wanted us to - and we worked _well_ , even with both of us not knowing what we were doing - and I just... I thought maybe if I chose Dean that time, put him first like I should have of it would fix it. I'd right whatever wrong I did before that and I was wrong. He was still married and I was the bad guy then, and it doesn't matter how many times she tells me she's not I know my Mom's disappointed with me about it. I put Dean first and that ended up an even bigger mess than the one you and I made."

"I could have told you that," He jokes and is glad when she looks at him and lets out a small huff of laughter. He crowds into her space, wipes at the corner of her eye and cuts her off with a kiss, tries to tell her in it that he can't hear anymore and she shouldn't talk about it more. They have time later on and he'll brace himself for it then, but he can't take anymore right now.

"I get why you don't talk now," Rory murmurs when he knocks their foreheads together and watches her through his lashes, "It sucks."

"I could have told you that," He repeats, "I _did_ tell you that."

She laughs for real this time and leans back to wipe at her cheeks and nose before settling against him again, her eyes trained on the car in front of them. She looks tired and relieved all at once, hand at his thigh and the nape of her neck at his shoulder. There's the tightness of his throat forming that he's well familiar with by now, but if he doesn't start talking about it now he never will. 

He takes a deep breath and rubs at her shoulder, "You can ask about it now," She looks up at him, brow raised in a question and he has to take another breath before quirking the corner of his mouth up and nodding, "I'm ready to talk about it."

"Tell me about Shane."

* * *

She lets him drive, clambering over him to get to the passenger seat and then traffic speeds up until he pulls them into the parking lot of a mass-chain service station. She needs to pee and wash her face, and preferably get a coffee or two in her before they get moving again, but she doesn't fail to notice how far away he parks - like he's not ready to talk and drive so he's given them some space from the steady stream of drivers around the doors. 

Jess slips his pinkie in hers as they walk in, though, and disappears into the men's room with a kiss to her shoulder. The women's room smells stale and two of the first sinks she tries doesn't work, but the third lets out boiling water. She dips some toilet paper under the tap and drags it under her eyes and nose in a poor attempt to fix the redness. She's had to bite back tears more time than she can count since he asked about Dean, and will no doubt have to fight more later on, but there is a sense of relief in her now it's out there.

It's not the whole story, but she thinks he couldn't hear any more once he kissed her. It's enough, though, for now. And it's really all she could say at the time anyway. She's not had a lot of time to think about her night with Dean. Not with Jess around, and she's glad of it. She can bury it all down, deal with it in small sections as and when it comes around and it's more comfortable than dealing with it all at once.

She dreads going back to Stars Hollow, where she'll have to deal with questions about Jess on top of all the Dean stuff too, knows there's a few names waiting for her from Lindsey's friends about sleeping with a married man and then running off with an ex-boyfriend who had run off himself before, but she _needs_ this time away. Needs to be away from that entire state and needs time to regroup. To get answers for herself that's been stirring around for four years. 

The mirrors above the sinks are just reflective pieces of plastic you can't break and makes everything blurry, and she's not the type of girl to carry around pocket mirrors everywhere she goes. It times like this she wishes she were still friends with Madeline and Louise, who would have come to her rescue before she started crying (albeit with teasing of their own), but then she's reminded that Jess didn't seem to care in the car. With a few deep breaths in the mirror, Rory tries to walk out the bathroom with some kind of confidence.

They're going to get back in the car and she's going to hear about Shane, about what they did while she was in Washington and how it all came about because she didn't call or write whilst she was away, because she didn't look for him when she got back like she wanted to.

It makes her feel a little better when she spots Jess leaning against the wall a few feet away, looking just as nervous as she feels. It feels normal, waiting in line with him to pay for their sandwiches and sodas, but it hits her what they're doing again once they get to the car. He clambers right up to the roof this time and spreads out his jacket so they don't sit in the dust, then takes her hand to pull her up too.

"So," He coughs, and Rory's lost her appetite. The sandwich is soggy anyway, so she busies herself with tearing tiny pieces of crumbs from the crust and balling them between her pointer finger and thumb.

"I don't know where to start," Jess says after an awkward pause, and it's obvious Rory's going to have get the ball moving.

There are so many questions she wants to ask, but the only thing that comes out is " _Why?_ "

Jess rolls his eyes and flushes a little, looking down at his lap, "You know why."

"I- I mean... _why Shane?_ "

"I didn't want a relationship... not-" He pauses again and tilts his head back, and Rory's momentarily distracted by the tension of his throat and the way his shoulders move under his shirt when he leans back, "Not with anyone else," It's unspoken, the _with you_ part, but he tilts his head a little to catch her eye before looking back up again and Rory reads between the lines he sets out anyway, "She'd flirted a few times when Luke forced me into school anyway and... You didn't call, or write and Dean was going about boasting about your internship like the trophy-boyfriend and it just- We hooked up. That was all it was. I was angry that you left and I had no right too, I think I was just mad you didn't say goodbye after the wedding. And you were gone for so long and Dean was still around, so I was passing the time. I didn't see the harm in it, as far as I was concerned I was just..." He trails off and Rory fills in those gaps too.

"You were just doing what I was doing with Dean."

"A bit further than what you were doing with Dean," He mutters and then lays himself down, tucking his hands under his head. He won't look at her, but Rory guesses it's easier for him this way. "Shane... Shane has a reputation and she never gave a shit about it, owned it. She was happy to fool around and I really only had to listen to her complain about some hairstyle or whatever every now again. She... I thought you would come back and we would talk or... I don't know, hell would freeze over and Dean wouldn't exist anymore? And I... I didn't know you were coming back that day. I was playing Shane and that wasn't fair on her, but then you saw us and you... I carried on with Shane because you carried on with Dean. Then I kept provoking you two because... I provoked _you_ because it meant I could convince myself that kiss meant something. The more you got annoyed, the more you kept looking at me at that dance, the more I could convince myself you cared or had some kind of feeling for me. I... I kept Shane along to try and get over you, and it didn't work."

"You broke up with her," Rory stays upright because if she lies down she's pretty sure everything's going to start spinning, especially that close to Jess, "Or whatever the equivalent is for a hookup. After Dean broke up with me you said I was right and then you left to break up with her."

She can't bring herself to say the rest. It's Jess's turn to fill in the blanks. He broke up with Shane, to her face, but he didn't with her. Not in words.

He winces and shifts his leg. His shin knocks against her knee and Rory wants to reach out and touch him, but he's given himself space for a reason. Almost immediately he moves his leg again, further away from her, space reinstated. 

"I wanted to. And then I didn't, because then at least I could trick myself into thinking long distance could work. It was really crappy, leaving you like that and I... I can't apologise enough for it. I know that. But... at that time, I honestly thought that was the best. If you wanted to give the long-distance thing a shot then I had done the right thing, and if you didn't then I didn't have to walk away from you after you broke up with me. Because I- I wouldn't have broken up with you. I really liked you Ror, and I was given a shot and I blew it so many times and I didn't want to be the one to break it off. It wouldn't have been fair to make you go through all of that just for me to leave you at the end. I gave you the out, I just didn't tell you about it, and I'm sorry."

It's so much more honest than she expected to get tonight, more than she expected to get in one go. She's not quite sure how she's meant to feel about it all. She'd known, for the most part, that Shane had been a fling - Jess never striked Rory as the type to go for the stereotypical blonde girls, not when he writes notes in her books and spends hours ranting about Ginsberg to her - but being jealous at seventeen and confused about everything throws all common sense out of the window. Rory had been trying to accept all of Dean's touches at that time, at the same time looking over his shoulder at Jess running _his_ hands all over Shane's back, sliding them into her back pockets, right there in the open and it only angered her because she wanted to swap places with the blonde. 

"I did write to you when I was in Washington," She lays down beside him, looks up at the sky. It's beginning to darken, the edges of her vision blending into soothing oranges and reds and she wonders how long they've been sitting here, "Well, I _started_ writing and I just... couldn't finish it."

"Yeah?"

She hums, nodding, "Paris was asking all these questions about boys and relationships, about my relationship with Dean and how I knew it was right. And I just- I realised I was describing _you_ way too late to take it back. It was like two in the morning and all I got was 'dear Jess' before I threw it out. Felt like I was betraying Dean and... I had already kissed you, I couldn't add another thing onto that list."

"Lane gave me your number," Jess matches her tone, "And I thought about calling a lot. But I didn't know your internship hours or if you even _wanted_ to speak to me."

"I did."

"Good, I wanted to speak to you too."

"I wouldn't have known what to say."

"Neither."

"We would have just sat in silence."

"A more stimulating conversation than whatever I had with Shane."

Rory laughs and is glad when Jess rolls to his stomach and reaches an arm across her, elbow steady beside her cheek. Her eyelashes flutter as he strokes her hair back from her forehead, and she feels his breath against her skin a moment later.

"So long as we're being honest with each other," Rory cracks her eyes open and takes note of how embarrassed he looks, almost nervous. There's a flush spreading up his neck and staining his ears, but he strokes her bottom lip with his thumb and she darts her eyes back up to his.

"Remember that black eye?"

She remembers her grandmother's reaction to it more than the actual bruise, can't really forget it considering Emily brings it up every time the word 'hooligan' comes up in conversation.

"Yeah, you got it from playing football."

"I've never played football in my life," He murmurs and when Rory furrows her eyebrows he blushes up to his cheeks, "I got beaked by a swan."

Rory nearly falls off of the car laughing so hard, likes that the clenching in her stomach is from the laughter and not from their conversations before. She only manages to stay steady because Jess grips her elbow and lets her laugh it out, turning redder each time a new peal of giggles slips past Rory's lips.

"Is that why you were late to dinner?"

"Luke and I tried to go fight it."

"You arm yourself?"

"Had a ladle."

Rory laughs all over again and still found herself giggling two hours later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more chapter to go and it is going to be HEFTY


End file.
